Finding the Way
by colorguard28
Summary: The MCRT must eliminate the Reynosa cartel to survive. But the effects of the hunt push Ziva to a breaking point that might destroy more than just her. Ziva/Damon, established Tony/McGee, established Jimmy/Abby, pre-Sarah McGee/Josh Cooper. Warnings in the author's note. Rating for violence, noncon/dubcon and dark themes.
1. Chapter 1

**Finding The Way**

_**AN:** It took longer than I originally intended, but Breathe is back. :) If you have read the series, this picks up right after Life is Made ends. (Seriously, about five minutes after it ends.) If you haven't read the series up until this point, here's the basics: We're at the end of Season 7, everybody's back from Mexico and Gibbs has gone up to get Jack after Paloma and her men shot up the store. McGee and Tony are married, Jimmy and Abby are living together and Sarah McGee moved in with Ziva after a nasty ex caused issues that forced her out of the Waverley dorms. She stayed when she graduated a few weeks ago. Oh, and she's pregnant by nasty ex, but not everybody knows that. ;) The story is done, and I'll post a chapter every day or two, mostly because it's a lot to absorb at once, both in word count and in topics. It will be completely posted by the end of November._

_**General setting/timeline info:** This is set shortly after Abby and McGee return from Mexico at the end of Season 7. While the series has tracked reasonably closely to canon (excluding relationships) up until now, that ends here because the trajectories of everybody's paths are headed too far away from canon. One thing I'm specifically changing is the length of time it takes to capture Paloma. I'm shortening it for reasons that will become clear. _

_**Warnings:** This is going to be a fairly dark story in many ways, with lots of difficult issues all the characters must face. Possible triggers: Sexual trauma, rape, issues surrounding fertility and pregnancy (miscarriage, abortion, infertility), PTSD, BDSM, abuse, torture and questions of consent. All of these likely will enter into the story at various points. If you want more information before deciding whether or not to read, please message me._

_**Thanks:** First, HUGE thanks to rose_malmaison for her stupendous art! This series has a lot of threads, and she managed to capture all of them and communicate the feel in her cover art and banners. Also, thanks to Kyrie for brainstorming help and Kesterpan for beta reading - she made several great suggestions that made the revised version a million times better. JetGibbs read one section when I drafted it almost three years ago and her input was invaluable. Any mistakes in that section are mine and mine alone. Finally, thanks to all the readers who didn't give up on Breathe despite what I thought (at times) would be a permanent hiatus. I finally managed to get my McDad and McAdmiral separated in my head, and I shoehorned in the space between Exeter books to FINALLY write this. I hope you enjoy it. And now, on to the story!_

* * *

**Chapter 1**

_Saturday, May 22, 2010_

Ziva watched as Tony grabbed a sawhorse at the bottom of the stairs in Gibbs' basement and angled it so he and McGee could both lean against it and face the rest of the room. Sarah chose to sit on the lower set of steps, and Ziva did not believe it was a coincidence that she was half-hidden behind McGee.

"Sorry we're late," Tony said.

"As long as everybody's here, Agent DiNozzo." Vance looked around the room, his suit and tie incongruous in the old-fashioned workroom. "Now, as some of you know, we have a bit of a situation on our hands." As he outlined what had happened in 1991 and more recently — skimming over the legality of what Gibbs had done — Ziva watched Eileen McGee's fair skin pale just that bit more, while Sean McGee straightened as though he was in uniform. Sarah gasped and wrapped her arms around herself. Jack's face reminded her more of Gibbs on the warpath than the kindly grandfather she normally saw. Damon's jaw twitched, and Ziva knew the warrior they had come to trust wanted to help.

As soon as Vance finished, Sean spoke up. "Director Vance, I'm assuming that you've called Eileen, Sarah and myself here because you believe we're in jeopardy because of this woman's vendetta against Gibbs."

"Correct, Commander," Vance said. "Now, as you are still on terminal leave, you fall under our jurisdiction. Even if you didn't, I would make sure you were protected." He turned to look at Gibbs. "We believe that Paloma Reynosa will stop at nothing to avenge her father, especially since she already made one attempt on Jackson Gibbs."

"That woman didn't know who she was messing with," Jack said, thumping his cane on the floor. "Now, what are we going to do about her?"

"Protect you," Gibbs said.

"Correct," Vance said. "We're adding a protective detail here, to keep both the house and Mr. Gibbs safe." He paused and looked over at the McGees. "That will also provide some additional protection for you both, and we're hoping that Paloma does not realize exactly who you are."

"What about Sarah?" Sean asked.

"Sarah is staying with me," Ziva said. "She will be safe there. She is not on the lease, so Paloma will not be looking for her there, and you would not think she and McGee are sister and brother to look at them." She redirected the conversation. "I would be more concerned about Jimmy and Abby."

"An excellent point, Agent David," Vance said. "Miss Scuito, Mr. Palmer, we'll be putting a protective detail on your apartment." He paused. "Mr. Palmer, please make sure your paperwork is up-to-date before somebody in HR asks why I'm not putting security on your old apartment as well."

Jimmy blushed. "Yes, Director."

Damon had been leaning against the concrete wall, but he straightened up. "Director Vance, why am I here? I'm not on the team, and I would think Brad Pitt would be a target before me."

"Excellent reasoning, Werth," Vance said.

"You're extra protection." Tony spoke up from his spot at the foot of the stairs. "You've got the training and nobody will suspect anything if you're at Sarah's coffee shop or in the apartment with her and Ziva or out with Jimmy or Abby."

Ziva almost missed the small lift of Vance's lips.

"Correct, Agent DiNozzo," Vance said. "Covering this many people without alerting anybody is difficult, and I know this is an intrusion. There are times when even those of you who are trained agents will need additional protection, and there are times when those of you who are not agents would be safe as long as you are in the presence of somebody who is trained at these sorts of duties." He looked over at Damon. "Since the city doesn't allow anyone except law enforcement to carry firearms, I've arranged for you to receive a temporary NCIS ID for your protective detail duties. After we finish here, you and Gibbs will go to the range so you can take and pass your qualifying test. I'll have a service weapon and badge ready for you once you finish."

"Well, Director, it seems you do indeed have all the bases covered," Ducky said. "Is there anything else we should know?" He looked toward the stairs and Ziva saw McGee flush before turning to look at Tony. They looked at each other for a bit, and Ziva was sure they could transcribe text of what they were communicating without words.

Ziva knew even before McGee opened his mouth what was coming.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Tim watched as Vance went through everything they knew and all the details for protective details. Ziva had bought them a little time by redirecting the questions away from Sarah, but Tim knew they would have to tell before this planning session ended. Correction, he would have to tell, since Tony and Sarah both agreed everybody would take it better coming from him. He ignored the churning in his stomach that usually only surfaced when he got on a ship.

Tim was just trying to figure out how to bring the subject up when Ducky prompted him — and Tim knew that's just what it was. When he looked over at Tony, his husband knew it, too — and he wasn't about to step in and get Tim off the hook for telling.

"There's one more thing," Tim said. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw Sarah trying to shrink into a small ball on the steps. "Director, I'm not sure exactly how this fits in, but..." Tim hesitated before a kick in the ankle from Tony gave him the push to continue — but not before shooting a glare at Tony. "Sarah discovered this week that she's pregnant — by Evil Josh — and she asked me and Tony to adopt the baby. We agreed."

The basement filled with babble as everybody started talking — even the team members who knew about Sarah's situation. His sister stayed on the steps, hidden behind him and Tony, and Tim couldn't help but be reminded of the time Tony and Ziva had to go find her in the Waverley Library, hiding from the murder charges.

Gibbs' sharp whistle cut the air and everybody stopped talking.

"This changes things," Vance said. "We're going to need to rethink our plans in light of this new information."

Sarah popped up. "Rethink how?"

"I don't know, Sarah," Vance said. "However, I do not believe this discussion needs to involve everybody." He looked around the room. "David, Werth, DiNozzo, Agent McGee, Gibbs and Dr. Mallard, please stay. The rest of you are free to go, though I suggest you stay in this house until we have the security precautions for everybody else dealt with."

"Come on, I think we could all do with a good lunch," Jack said as he levered himself to his feet.

Tim wasn't surprised to see Sarah head up the stairs first, but he knew their parents were going to catch up with her — and Abby, provider of the initial, incorrect, test — upstairs. He was glad he and Tony would miss that part of the discussion.

Once the room had cleared out, Vance scanned the room. "How long have you known?"

"Ziva figured out Sarah was pregnant last week and they told Abby," Tim said. "Abby told Jimmy after we got back from Mexico, and Sarah finally told Tony and me yesterday — then she asked us to adopt the baby."

Tony chimed in. "Gibbs knew Sarah was pregnant, and so did Ducky, but none of them knew Sarah had asked us to adopt."

"I did not know myself," Ziva said. "Not until today when Sarah told me."

"I didn't know any of it," Damon said. "But this changes things a lot — from what you guys have said about this Paloma woman, if she finds out about Sarah, she's going to target her."

Vance nodded. "I'm familiar with Miss McGee's resistance to authority, but not protecting her is not an option in this situation, however little she'll like it."

"Let us talk to her tonight," Tony said. He looked around the room. "I think a planning session back at our house tonight — one that looks like a game night to anybody observing — would make more sense."

"Tony's right," McGee said. "Sarah will be more likely to accept whatever we decide if she feels like she's had a voice in it, and we'll be able to discuss a lot more options if you and Gibbs don't know anything about it, Director."

Ziva nodded. "They are right," she said. "Damon, perhaps you can keep the McGees occupied while I tell the others?" At his agreement, she headed upstairs, leaving Tony and McGee downstairs with Gibbs and the director. She was sure they all had much to discuss before tonight.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Once upstairs, Ziva stopped in the kitchen to say something to Jack. Damon kept walking and wasn't surprised when Sean caught his eye and headed toward the front door, not after Vance and Tony had tagged Damon for extra protection of Sarah. He left distracting Eileen McGee to Ziva since he knew the sailor would want this conversation in private.

When Sean reached for the front door, Damon stepped forward. "Let me," he said. As he opened the door, he scanned the street and neighboring yards for potential threats. He'd seen the NCIS agency cars often enough to recognize the one where one half of the protective detail maintained a watch, while the other agent focused on the back and sides of the yard. At the end of each round, the agent would just come into Damon's view before turning for another sweep of the yards.

Once he was satisfied that the area was as safe as possible, he walked out, taking up a position leaning against the corner of the house at the top of the steps. There, he could see anybody approaching.

"You're all taking this seriously," Sean said.

"Gibbs doesn't mess around," Damon said. "And Ziva doesn't spook easily. None of us are willing to risk somebody else getting hurt."

"You and Ziva are certain you can protect Sarah?"

Damon nodded, then studied Sean's face. He didn't see doubt there, just concern. "With both of us and Jethro, she'll be safe. Your grandchild, too."

Sean shook his head, a smile crossing his face before morphing into a small frown. "Never figured things would happen like this," he said. "Don't get me wrong — I'm excited about the boys' news. But I know my daughter, and I know this isn't what she wanted at all."

"No, but she's finding her way," Damon said. "I first met the team because I had done something wrong while trying to do something good. Agent Gibbs understood, and he did what he could to help me. That helped me find my own way out of the mess I'd made."

"Are you saying Sarah-"

"No." Damon cut him off. "Sarah didn't do anything wrong. Josh is the only one who did something wrong here. But Sarah does have to find her own way out, and this is how she's choosing to do it."

Sean didn't say anything for several seconds. "Promise me one thing?"

"Of course, sir."

"You'll tell me if-"

Damon saw sunlight flash off reflected metal and pulled Sean flat to the ground, shielding him with his body as he shouted. "Ziva!" He felt helpless without a gun as the bullets hit the house, one whistling past his head.

Ziva burst through the front door just as the agents on duty started firing back. She aimed her SIG and next thing Damon knew, he was in a firefight. Ziva used the wall of Gibbs' house as a shield, but the way the cartel was spraying bullets around, it wouldn't take much. Damon scanned the street for the enemy, his eyes in constant motion. The bright mid-day sun made him squint, but he saw one of the enemy take cover behind a car before firing, and Damon ducked, reaching for the weapon he wasn't carrying.

Instead of green grass, he saw sand and dust covering everything. The gunfire was so loud, he could swear it was kicking up sand and he shielded his face.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

At first, Sarah thought she was hearing fireworks. Then Ziva went running for the front door and everybody else hit the deck, Abby and Jimmy pulling her to the ground with them. Sarah curled up as much as she could, but when Tim, Tony, Gibbs and the director thundered up the steps she wanted to reach out and tell them to stop.

She didn't know how long it lasted, how many shots were fired. All she knew was that she'd never been this scared, even when she showed up at Tim's apartment covered in unknown blood with no memory of how she'd gotten it on her.

The noise stopped, and Sarah wondered if that meant she was dead and just couldn't feel it. Then she heard Jimmy.

"Is everybody OK?" he asked.

"We're not the ones you need to check on," Abby said. "Jimmy, what if they're hurt?"

Sarah looked up to see Ducky putting a hand on Abby's shoulder. "Abigail, just a moment," he said. "Mr. Palmer, please proceed cautiously, and do not go outside unless they say it is safe."

"Yes, Dr. Mallard." Jimmy scrambled to his feet and Sarah figured that meant it was safe for her to sit up. She hugged her knees, but couldn't curl up as much as she wanted. Stupid baby. She looked over to see her mom looking pale, but okay.

"Wait, what about Dad?" Sarah pushed herself up, but Abby grabbed her hand and pulled her back to the floor.

"Stay down," she said.

"Abby's right," Jack said, looking out from behind the chair where he'd taken cover. "Leroy will tell us if it's safe."

"It's safe," Jimmy called from the front hall. "Sean and Damon are fine, and the others are investigating."

Sarah pulled free from Abby's hand and stood up, then walked over to where Jack was sitting. "Come on," she said, offering a hand. "You can't stay there all afternoon." Her mom joined her, and the two of them got Jack to his feet, with him muttering about Sarah needing to take it easy the whole time.

"I'm okay," she said.

"Ducky, you should take a look at him," Abby said.

"I'm old, not dead," Jack retorted, reaching for the cane Abby had picked up off the floor. "I just can't move as easily as you kids anymore."

"It was a sudden situation," Ducky said, as he bent over to rub one knee. "I rather think I should check all of you out for bumps and bruises."

Sarah tested everything out, rolling her shoulders. One hip twinged as she moved. "Ow." But as Ducky moved toward her, she held up one hand. "Ducky, I'm okay. I think I just overstretched something when I landed."

"Ah, yes," Ducky said. "That is something you'll have to be careful about these next few months." He motioned for her to sit, and Sarah decided it wasn't worth arguing. "Your ligaments will start loosening up during these next few months to prepare your body for when the baby arrives. You will find you are able to move further in some ways, but you must be careful not to overstretch, or it could become quite painful after the baby arrives."

"Great." Sarah grimaced. "Another thing to look forward to." She saw her mom start to say something and cut her off. "So now that we know that they were serious when they said somebody wants to kill Gibbs and everybody else, what are we going to do?"

"For those of faith, I rather think a prayer or two might be in order," Ducky said. "It certainly can't hurt."


	2. Chapter 2

_**AN:** Thanks for all the wonderful comments about Breathe being back - those made my day! Yes, this story started out with a bang, but sometimes it's the slow burn you really have to watch for. Wherever you think this story is going, it's probably not. ;) _

* * *

By the time everything was sorted at Gibbs' house, Balboa's team had returned to the Navy Yard to hunt down clues to the hit squad and Gibbs and Damon had headed for the firing range, Tim was glad the team was coming over that night. He would feel better if he could keep an eye on Sarah. And the baby. Tim still hadn't quite wrapped his mind around all the changes in the past few days.

As they all piled into the house after stopping for supplies, Jethro bounced among them with tail wagging hard enough to send more than one glass teetering.

"Enough, McMutt," Tony said, heading for the kitchen. He returned with a rawhide and tossed it toward the study. "So, what exactly are we going to do about this mess?"

"Take down the cartel," Ziva said.

"NCIS, the police, the FBI, most branches of the military and the CIA have been trying to take down the cartel for years," Abby said. "You guys are good — I mean scary-good because you have Gibbs and all of you guys are so good at what you do and you don't stop and you always get the dirtbags — but the cartel's been doing this for years. They set Gibbs up and me and probably the director and we have to figure out how to-" Abby stopped when Jimmy put a finger to her lips.

"Breathe, Abbs," he said. "We're going to figure it out." He turned to Tony. "You are going to figure it out, right?"

Tony nodded and looked around the circle of Gibblets in the living room. "We'll get them. But that's not what we need to worry about tonight. The Boss and Vance are working on that. We need to make sure everybody's safe." He pointed to Jimmy and Abby. "Darren's outside, right, Abbs?"

She nodded, her eyes shining with unshed tears. Tim was glad to see Jimmy wrap his arm around her shoulders.

"Tony's right," Tim said. "Jimmy and Abby, you guys are taken care of. Ducky is, too. Jimmy, if you're going to be someplace off the Navy Yard without either Abby or Ducky, get one of us to go with you."

"I can help, too." Damon spoke up. "My schedule with the Warriors is flexible because a lot of times I'm meeting with veterans who have civilian jobs, so I'm working around their schedule." He looked over at the gun safe on the tabletop. "I'm ready if anything happens."

"Good." Tim looked over at Tony, then checked to see how Sarah was handling this. "Now, we have two other big issues we need to deal with."

"I'm one of them," Sarah said, raising her hand halfway. "But what's the other?"

Tim hesitated, trying to pick the right words. "Tony and I can't stay here," he said.

"Tim and I looked into adoption laws back when we first started thinking about kids a few months back and we figured out pretty quickly that we needed to be living in DC to adopt — and we need to be considered DC residents, which means we need to move pretty quickly," Tony added. "If the courts think we're playing residency games, that's going to make things tougher."

"Tony, we _are_ playing residency games," Tim said, dodging his husband's headslap.

"That does make things difficult," Ziva said. "Sarah could have moved in here, but not if you are moving."

"I don't know what we're going to do," Tim said. "We still have six months left on the lease for our house, and we're going to have a tough time finding a place in the city that can accommodate Jethro. If my parents take him and Paloma's lurking around, she'll figure out the first time Mom calls him to come back inside that my parents are more than just neighbors of Gibbs'." He sighed. "If we catch her right away, we won't need to worry and we could do that."

"I'm not moving again just to move in a few more weeks." Sarah crossed her arms. "I've only been at Ziva's for six weeks. Now you're saying I move in here for a few weeks, then move again?"

"Sarah is right," Ziva said. "We need a solution for Sarah that can be permanent."

"Well, at least something that works until after the baby's born and the adoption goes through," Tim said.

Ziva tapped her lower lip. "You would prefer to live here after that?"

"We don't want to live in DC," Tony said. "The schools are lousy and I'm not subjecting my kid to private school." He shuddered.

Tim snickered, then sobered. "Tony's right. We'd talked about moving down around Alexandria so we'd be near my parents and Gibbs, but we can't do that until we've finished adopting — Virginia won't let us. We're not ready to decide how many kids we want."

"I'd offer to take your place here and keep Jethro, but I'd need to find housemates," Damon said. "My work with Wounded Warriors is going to have me at Bethesda a lot and this is about the same distance from the base as my piece-of-crap rental."

"That still doesn't answer the question about keeping Sarah safe," Tim said. "Especially since you live down near her and Ziva now, and we're all the way on the northeast side of the city."

"That is it," Ziva said. She looked around the room, her hand tracing a line through the air. "There is plenty of room here, including a bedroom on this floor. Sarah and I can move here, with Damon as a third housemate. You and Tony can take over my lease."

"That's it!" Tony grinned. "DC doesn't know I'm not a resident anymore — I use the Navy Yard for all my bills and official mail, and I never bothered changing my car and voter registration over to Maryland last year because of the car tax. As far as the city knows, I still live in Georgetown, and Tim and I got married inside the city limits."

"Our place is more expensive than what they have, Tony," Tim said, though he could see the sense in what Tony had said. "Sarah?"

"I'd have to take the Metro instead of walking to work," she said. "I'm not even sure the Metro's open early enough for me to get to work in time to open."

"I am often up then to run before work," Ziva said. "I could drop her off."

"Not if we catch a case," Tony said.

"I'm awake early most mornings," Damon said. "Ziva and I run together a couple of days a week. I could give Sarah a ride if Ziva's stuck at work."

"I can take the Metro home," Sarah said. "Middle of the day, she won't try anything."

Tim raised one eyebrow, and Sarah frowned. "OK, so today she tried something," Sarah said. "But if she goes after me on the Metro, there are cops and cameras around, plus lots of witnesses."

"I could work my schedule to give you a ride home most days," Damon said. "It's only for a week or two, right?"

Tim decided to let that discussion drop.

"So we're moving?" he asked instead. "Sarah, Ziva, you're both okay with Damon living here?"

"It was my idea, McGee," Ziva said.

Damon shot a look at Ziva before replying. "I could use the room you use as a study, McGee, for a bedroom. That way Ziva and Sarah would have plenty of privacy upstairs." He frowned. "It would be better anyway, if I'm helping on protection detail. If anybody tries to break in, I'll hear them."

"It is a sensible plan," Ziva added. "We would have plenty of space, and that is an easily defensible house, should we need to worry about that."

"Ziva's right," Tony said. "And if the laws change so that we don't have to be in DC to adopt Sarah's baby, we could easily swap back, and Sarah could stay so she doesn't have to move again."

Tim turned to his sister. "Sarah?"

She shrugged. "I guess I don't really have a choice, do I?"

"If you are not comfortable with this, Sarah, we do not have to do it," Ziva said.

"No, I'll do it," she said.

"And Damon, you are sure?" Ziva asked.

"I'm happy to help — and happy to get out of the short-term housing I've been living in. At least in Iraq there was a reason the quarters were lousy."

Abby and Sarah laughed, and Tim was glad to hear the sound.

"So," he said. "How do we do this discreetly?"

"We don't move furniture, or at least most of it," Tony said. "Your desk and typewriter, my TV. Our clothes and other personal stuff."

"Tony is right," Ziva said. "We can bring the bed in Sarah's room since you only have two beds here, and switch the mattresses for our beds." She paused. "Perhaps you should move one of your dressers to the apartment — mine is not big enough for both of you to use." She smirked. "We know how Tony loves his clothes."

Tim thought about it. "That should do it," he said. "And we can move clothes and other things quietly over the course of a few days. We just need to move the furniture tomorrow."

"I'll call Gibbs," Tony said. "Vance, too. Damon, Jimmy, if you two can help, then McMarksman and Ziva can stand watch with their weapons while we load up the truck."

Tim wanted to protest, but he knew his shoulder would be a wreck if he helped move furniture, especially if they were trying to do it quickly. Even after all his PT, he still could feel the scar tissue from his surgery and the bullet wound when he moved the joint certain ways. "Abby, Sarah, please stick with Darren tomorrow while we're doing all the moving. That way we're not all worrying about you."

"I have to work," Sarah said.

"I'll hang out at the coffee shop," Abby said. "I have a stack of forensic journals I need to catch up on."

When Sarah nodded her agreement, Tim agreed, too. "So we have a plan."

"Now that all the family drama's resolved, how are we going to catch this bitch before she hurts anybody else?" Tony asked.

Tim couldn't stifle a snort at Tony's comment, though nothing about this situation was funny. At least Paloma would be behind bars in another week or two and they could focus on the rest of it.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

That evening, Ziva stood in her kitchen looking around. Although she shared the apartment with Sarah, the younger woman was not a proficient cook and generally avoided the kitchen.

Nothing in the space was all that old. The explosion at her last apartment had ensured that. She had purchased most of the items a year ago when she was rebuilding her life in America. Still, they were hers. The cream-colored dishes with their blue and brown edging and the stainless steel utensils carried no old memories.

If this was a normal night, Ziva would pull down the correct dishes and ingredients to make one of the recipes she had learned over the years from her mother, from her Aunt Nettie or from her own experimentation. The measuring and mixing soothed her and allowed her mind to settle. She vowed to do that tomorrow evening to make the kitchen in the house as much hers as it had been Tony and McGee's. She did not believe Damon much cared for cooking. If he did, he had never given any indication of it. In a space shared with too many — two people, plus Jethro — the kitchen could be one place that was hers and hers alone. Since they had decided that the move needed to be quick and quiet, she would not have her bed, the one she had picked out last year because the rich maple frame with its carved scrollwork was a small luxury that reminded her she was no longer in Israel. It was perhaps a bit more frivolous than her personality, but her spaces in her time at Mossad had been utilitarian at best. Her apartment in Washington before the explosion had been much the same, with generic furniture that revealed nothing of its owner. Now Tony and McGee would be sleeping in that bed, and she would be sleeping in theirs. The living space where she was used to attending game nights with the team now would be a space she, Damon and Sarah would share, along with the dog. But the kitchen was hers and hers alone.

Ziva began taking down dishes and wrapping them in the newspapers stacked in her recycling bin, mostly unread. She knew for intel reasons she needed to read them, but too often she found herself locating the information online before she had time to look at the paper. She should cancel the subscription when they moved, rather than spend the money. Even with three of them splitting the cost, Ziva knew she would be paying more. Tony and McGee had offered to make up the difference, but Damon and Sarah refused and Ziva agreed.

She crumpled the edges of the paper down into the glasses as extra cushioning and decided to make a point of putting this space in order first tomorrow, even before her bedroom.


	3. Chapter 3

_Sunday, May 23, 2010_

Without much actual furniture moving, the house swap took less time the next day than Tony had thought. They put Jethro out back while they were moving Ziva's furniture in, then loaded theirs up and fled the house before Jethro could realize he wasn't leaving with them.

It didn't take them long to get everything unloaded at the apartment, then Gibbs, Damon, Vance and Jimmy left. Once Tony and Tim had everything moved into the correct space, Tony shooed Tim away to the spare room.

"That's what's going to be the nursery, McDad," he said. "At least that's what we're going to have to tell people until the adoption is final and we can swap everything back around. So better go figure out what we need." He waved a hand at the boxes and garment bags strewn across the bed. "I'll take care of this mess."

Tim just nodded and yawned as he walked out, and Tony checked the time. If he finished up quickly, they could have an early dinner and be to bed in time to get at least 10 hours of sleep. Then they could go back to cartel-hunting.

He started with the clothes for the drawers, putting them away quickly. Tony's socks didn't all fit in Ziva's old dresser, so he took one of Tim's sock drawers.

Then he started in on the closets, glad for once that Ziva had chosen an apartment with a large closet, though that wasn't her style. He had a feeling she used the extra space for her undercover wardrobe, the items that were very un-Ziva that he knew she had in case she ever had to flee. Even after everything she owned had been destroyed when Mossad blew up her apartment to destroy what Rivken had done, Tony knew she had built a new wardrobe, one he suspected was designed in case Eli ever decided Ziva needed to return and make yet another aliyah. He'd seen her out once at the mall purchasing clothes he could never seen her wearing, back during her first few months as a probie. That extra space would be perfect for all his suits and Tim's blazers and jackets. And maybe he could persuade Ziva that she did not need to worry about running again, not now that she was an American and a full-time agent. Eli couldn't hurt her, and the rest of them would make sure nothing from her Mossad past came back to chase her away.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Sarah and Abby walked in the door to her brothers' house — no, her house now — to find her bed in pieces on the living room floor.

Damon popped his head out of what was now his room. "I'll have that out of your way in a minute," he said. "I was putting my clothes away first."

Sarah looked at the twin bed she had brought from Ziva's apartment to Damon's frame. He was taller than her — as tall as Tim and Tony — and he had more muscles than even Jimmy.

"You can't sleep there," she said. "The bed upstairs is a queen-sized bed — you should take that one."

Damon shook his head. "The bed's bigger than my bunk was," he said. "When Heatherton's wife was pregnant with their little girl, he said she was always moving around the last few months to get comfortable. This bed doesn't give you enough space to move."

"Yeah, but my feet won't be hanging off it." Sarah looked from the bed to Damon and back to the bed. "You're about two inches too tall to fit comfortably on this bed."

"I'm taking it," Damon said. "You can't move the bed upstairs even if you wanted to — if I take this one, you have to use the one upstairs. I'm not sleeping up there — that's the ladies section of the house, except for when I need to shower."

Sarah flushed at the idea of seeing Damon dripping wet in a towel and decided retreat was her best bet. "Fine," she said, walking toward the stairs and leaving Abby downstairs. She heard the front door shut a minute later and figured Abby had left.

Only was she safe in what was now her room did she let her mind drift back to the image of a wet, half-naked Damon. This was crazy. She liked Damon, sure, but he was Ziva's. Even if they weren't officially dating, they would be. She knew that, Damon and Ziva knew that. She was pretty sure even Gibbs knew that, though Tim always said Gibbs knew everything, so maybe that wasn't such a big test. Sarah shook off the images in her brain and started unpacking her clothes. At least she hadn't unpacked most of them yet from when she moved out of the dorms, so it hadn't taken her long to pack that morning. And the ones that were in boxes could just stay there — they wouldn't fit anyway. She made a face at the mirror that hung on the wall. The house had more space and a bigger bed than the apartment, but somehow Sarah felt even more trapped in what was going on.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Damon waited until Sarah was upstairs and Abby was gone. When Ziva didn't come out of the kitchen, he decided to retreat to his new room and put together the bed frame. The colors were fine with him and he hadn't been fibbing to Sarah. He really didn't mind the smaller bed. A bigger one would be more comfortable, sure, but having that kind of temptation off the living room when Ziva was living here was a recipe for trouble. He hadn't bothered making a move. Ziva knew he was waiting on her, and he knew she wasn't going to hold back once she had decided. He could be patient until then. For now, he was happy just being her friend. She was a good one, somebody who had helped him before when he needed it. Now he was able to return the favor, and he appreciated it.

As he finished the bed, he looked around the small room, noticing how much cleaner it was than the dump where he'd been staying before this. Once he manhandled the mattress and box spring into place, it was even neater. He hadn't been sorry to say goodbye to the short-term rental room or to the junkies and hookers that filled the building. It had been cheap, but dangerous. This was a different kind of danger, one he was used to. The cartel wouldn't get to Sarah or Ziva while he was around.

Damon walked the room, checking locks on the windows. Once he finished that, he swept the ground floor for threats. It was empty, but he could see that Ziva had unpacked the kitchen supplies. Whatever was in the oven smelled good, even if it was heating up the kitchen. He checked the stove timer — still 30 minutes to go.

The backyard was reasonably secure, but the front door was easily accessible, even with the deadbolt. As the sky darkened, Damon noticed the streetlight outside was flickering. He decided to leave his door open at night so that he would hear any potential disturbance and be able to stop it.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

When her two new housemates had started arguing about which bed would go where, Ziva decided now was the perfect time to unpack the kitchen. She set about unwrapping and wiping down each dish with a damp cloth before putting it away. This kitchen had more cabinet space, but Ziva kept the setup as close to what she had used in her old apartment as possible.

She lifted the plates one at a time, aligning the edges perfectly before adding the next. The glasses became soldiers in precise rows awaiting inspection. Once the dishes all were put away, Ziva checked their supplies before taking down the ingredients for a simple casserole. The dish was quick to assemble and she would not need to bother with precise measurements and dirtying many dishes in preparation. It would be quick, yet nourishing.

She finished assembly and slid the baking dish into the oven, setting the stove's timer for fifty minutes.

Ziva listened, but the bed discussion seemed finally to be over. Nobody had started dismantling the larger bed in Sarah's new room, so Damon must have won that discussion. Ziva, selfishly, was glad. The next few months would be difficult enough. Seeing Sarah squeezed onto the more-narrow sleeping surface, or the sight of the larger bed through the doorway in Damon's room would be a constant reminder. She knew her brain, now that she had heard them argue about it, would not be able to untangle the two images — one would always remind her of the other. And that one would always remind her how difficult the next several months would be. She would not — could not — do anything differently than she had done up until now. But she knew that would not stop the memories of Somalia from returning. They already had begun, and she knew they would only continue until this was resolved. She moved quickly through the house, glad both her housemates were in their bedrooms so she did not have to talk to them.

Ziva shut the door to her new room — the one that had been Tony and McGee's — and lay down on the bed. She was not physically tired, not really. Even though she no longer did the level of conditioning the Kidon unit had required, she kept up a stricter regimen than the rest of the team. It had begun as a way to reassert her control last year, and now she considered it a necessary way to keep her body in prime condition. She would never have the raw strength or power that Tony or Damon could call on, that Gibbs once had had. She never would have the length of stride McGee had, or his long reach. But she was fast and flexible, and she would make sure her body was a powerful tool.

But as she lay there, she let her mind rest for just a minute. Damon was downstairs. Sarah was in her new room, no doubt. Ziva had not realized how difficult it would be to act the part, to stay on watch and to keep herself in check. Her mind was exhausted. She had lost her ability to play a role at all times after so many years away from Mossad and its demands.

Now, with two housemates, she would have no space to stop playing the role. She could not allow either one of them to realize what memories she refused to share. One would not understand. The other, she was afraid, would understand all too well.


	4. Chapter 4

_**AN:** Thanks for all the wonderful comments! For those who have wondered: This is Breathe, but it is Ziva-centric. Tim and Tony definitely have their role in the story, as do the others, but Ziva and the Somalia aftermath are taking center stage. On a side note, is anybody else doing NaNoWriMo this year? I am, first time since 2003, and I'm jenniecoughlin over there. Not fanfic, though - I'm drafting my next Exeter Mob Chronicles book. Now, on with the story! We have a new (old) character showing up in this chapter, for those who remember him from Season 4. _

* * *

_Monday, May 24, 2010_

When Ziva finally decided to get up, it was after five in the morning. She had been about to go from a run earlier when she heard Sarah's alarm go off and the younger woman moving around. So she waited until her housemates had left, with Damon driving Sarah to work before going on to his own job.

Her muscles were stiff after a night of fitful sleep and Ziva caught herself yawning twice in the shower. That would not do. She could not afford to have anybody question her about her inability to sleep.

As she backed her Mini Cooper out onto the quiet Silver Springs street, Ziva realized caffeine was in order. She stopped for a coffee, one with plenty of milk and sugar to make it palatable in lieu of her morning tea. As she continued on to the Navy Yard, she realized she should not — could not — have a usual route. That way lay danger, danger she could not afford. If you had a routine, it could be bested. If people knew what to predict, they could bypass your security measures. The only way to ensure that you were safe was to maintain strict operational security. She Thought about that as she parked her Mini Cooper and headed for the bullpen. She must take time today to purge her routine of routine. Was the the right word? She sometimes missed not having Tony or McGee around to correct her when she was off on a word or two.

Ziva sat down at her desk, greeting the others briefly before diving into the work that she had left behind the night before. She sipped from her cup from time to time, speeding up as she realized the bitter brew was starting to cool, rendering it even less palatable. She did, however, relish the caffeine. She did not often drink coffee, usually only on missions, but it did have its purposes. She could always go get some tea in Ducky's office later today if she wanted.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Abby twisted her hands, fingers intertwining as she paced around the lab. She managed to ignore Darren as he stood guard, but that was mostly because she couldn't stop thinking about that damned report. They couldn't catch Paloma, and Alejandro was still asking about her report. Gibbs had hinted that Ms. Hart had actually showed she had one and destroyed her copy, but Abby knew the director still had one, and if anybody asked him for it, what if he turned it over? She didn't think he would, but she didn't think he would lie either and if he didn't lie, people were going to find out that Gibbs had done something really bad, even if he did it for really, really good reasons.

She rushed over to her computer and started typing. Maybe she could- No, that wouldn't work. Or she could-

No, that wasn't going to work either. Abby stomped her foot. She had to find a way out of this before Gibbs got in trouble she couldn't get him out of, and the team and Vance and everybody couldn't get him out of. That would just kill Jack and he was too nice and too sweet to have to lose his son that way, not after Shannon and Kelly and Gibbs' mom were all gone, too.

She whirled away from her computer, ignoring the braid that smacked her in the face.

"You're not taking down Gibbs, you bitch," she said, sticking her tongue out at the photo of Paloma on her wall. She grabbed a marker and added devil's horns and fangs to the poster that already bore a mustache and a mohawk. "He's a million times better person than you are, no matter what he did or didn't do."

"Agreed, Miss Scuito."

Abby yelped and spun around, dropping the marker and watching as it hit the ground and left a black line before rolling over to hit the director's polished wingtip.

"Um, sorry, Leon." Abby bit her lower lip. "I just, well, got a little-"

"I understand." Vance cut her off. "No need for apologies — I wouldn't want you to run afoul of Gibbs' rules." He looked over to her inner office, then back. When he did it a second time, Abby felt like smacking her forehead.

"Director, I need to get something from my office," she said, walking over. She wasn't surprised when he followed her in, or when he hit the button shutting the door. Abby turned to face him.

"Miss Scuito." Vance waited until she nodded. "I filed a number of reports for old cases in the archives today, although some of them were missing case numbers. For those, I just put them in any box that had room."

Abby smiled. "And you don't remember which boxes those were, do you?"

"I probably should have made a note of them." Vance smiled. "I'm afraid it's too late now."

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Later that morning, Tony leaned a hip on the edge of his desk as he faced Tim, crumpled paper balls in hand.

"Don't even think about it," Tim said without looking up from the computer screen on the right side of his desk.

"You're not even looking this way." Tony knew he was pouting and didn't care.

"Tony, I know you," Tim said.

"You do have difficulty with waiting, Tony," Ziva chimed in as she walked over, standing in the middle of the bullpen. "The cartel did too good a job covering their tracks."

"Not if I can help it," Tim said. "If we can trace their pipeline in the U.S., we can figure out where the drugs are coming in and start to shut them down."

"So what, you're hacking the DEA now?" Tony said. When Tim didn't reply — unless you counted the pink tips of his ears and the back of his neck — Tony dropped his head so nobody could see his smile. "Of course. Why did I even ask?"

"We must be cautious," Ziva said. "If we are not, we could make things much worse if we pick the wrong time."

"Not that cautious," Tony retorted, crossing his arms. "This has been going on too long, and as far as I'm concerned the moment we get a lead on Paloma's whereabouts, it's the right time."

"And the right place?" The voice from him wasn't one Tony knew, but he thought he should.

Tony turned around to see a young man with reddish hair and freckles, his face long and big-boned. The young man was leaning on the cubicle wall at the side of Tony's desk, but looked to be about Tony's height. He parried for time, knowing he should know the face. "The right place?"

"Just quoting you, Tony," the guy said. "You said, 'There is a right time and there is a right place.' Remember?"

Tony remembered a teenager's bedroom with lacrosse gear and jazz records. "Josh Cooper?" When the kid smiled, he knew he'd remembered correctly.

"Cooper?" Ziva asked.

"Do you remember the first case we worked with Lt. Col. Mann, at the Army-Navy Club?" Tony prompted her. "Josh's father was a Marine who was targeted by Sharif."

"Of course," Ziva said. "Josh, it is nice to see you again, but why are you here? Is something wrong?"

Josh shook his head. "I just finished my senior year at Princeton, thanks to Tony, and I don't start at Georgetown Law until the fall. So I put in for an internship at NCIS." He straightened up and stepped into the bullpen, his temporary NCIS ID clipped to his belt. "I get my assignment today, but I wanted to stop by and say hello — and thank you."

"Thank you?" Ziva asked.

"Tony stopped me from dropping out of school and enlisting after my dad was killed," Josh said. "I owe him a lot."

When Tim didn't have a comment on that, Tony looked over to see he was still deep in his hacking zone. "Hey, McGeek," he called. "Time to come up for air." He lobbed one of the paper balls at the back of Tim's head.

Tim jerked when it hit him and whipped his head around. "Tony-" He broke off when he saw it wasn't just the team. "How many times did you call me this time?" he asked.

"Just one," Tony said. "Tim, you remember Josh Cooper, from our first Sharif case?" He could see the moment that Tim's giant brain found the right data file. "He's interning at NCIS before he starts law school in the fall.

"Hey, Josh," Tim said, walking over. "Good to see have you aboard."

"I was just thanking Tony," Josh said. "He kept me from doing something stupid back then."

Tony could see the corners of Tim's lips twitching, but his husband managed not to smirk. "Considering that was right in the middle of the Jeanne debacle, I'm glad to see something positive come out of that year," Tim said instead.

Tony scowled. "Hey, if I hadn't been forced by an op into figuring out feelings, you'd still be single, McLonely."

"No, he would be with Abby and you and Jimmy would be the single ones," Ziva said.

Tony resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at Ziva, and instead turned back toward Josh. The kid looked completely confused.

"Oh, sorry," Tony said. "Josh, McGee and I got married last year. The rest of it is complicated."

"You make it sound like we're not complicated," Tim retorted. "Sorry, Josh, it's always like this around here. Well, unless Gibbs is within head-smacking range."

"I'll remember that." Josh opened his mouth as though he was going to say something else, then closed it again.

A sharp whistle from behind Tony had the four of them turning to the staircase landing. "You four, Vance's office."

"Josh, too?" Tony asked.

"You see somebody else standing around, DiNozzo?" Gibbs turned and headed upstairs.

"Wonder what Vance has in mind now?" Tony said, motioning Josh and Ziva to start walking.


	5. Chapter 5

_AN: I'm glad so many of you liked Josh Cooper's appearance. Yes, I do like bringing back canon characters. But if you've been reading Breather from the beginning, you knew that. (And if this is your first Breathe story, I hope you're following along OK - I tried to make this one so you didn't have to have read the earlier ones.) _

* * *

Josh Cooper fell in line behind the agents as they headed upstairs. He knew Vance was the director of NCIS, but he couldn't imagine why Agent Gibbs was telling him to come along with the rest of Gibbs' team. He was just a lowly intern.

He followed the team through a door to a small office with a secretary, who just motioned them toward the open door. Once through the door, he looked around, taking in the director's office. It looked like a lot of the other rooms in the building that he remembered from four years ago, but the boxing photos on the walls were different. He wondered if the director used to be a boxer — he looked like he could have been. Josh took a seat the the long conference table next to Ziva, wondering what was going on.

"Shouldn't Dwayne be here?" Tony asked.

"Agent Wilson is reporting back to Cold Cases, effective today," Vance said as he stood at the head of the table. "Now that Agent McGee is back in the field, and in light of the discussions yesterday, I have a different plan in mind."

Josh wondered what Vance meant, but decided he didn't get to ask. He was just an intern, after all.

"Agent McGee, have you made any progress tracking the cartel's pipeline?" Vance asked.

"Some," McGee said, and started to outline what he'd found. Josh couldn't help but wonder at the surprised expression on Tony's face. He didn't have to wait long, though, since Tony spoke up as soon as McGee was done.

"Wait, you were hacking on the director's behalf?" Tony shook his head and turned to face Vance. "Director, one of these days he's going to need a get out of jail free card for these McHacking trips."

"He has one," Vance said. "Now, as Agent McGee has outlined, we have a number of options to try and shut down the pipeline and force Paloma out of hiding. But this is where things get complicated."

"_Get_ complicated?" Tony said. When Gibbs turned to glare at Tony, he was quick to offer a "Shutting up, Boss" and slap himself on the back of his head.

"Mr. Cooper, you have some skill with computers, correct?" Vance asked.

Josh nodded, wondering where this was going. "Yes, sir."

"Good. Your internship application mentioned you wanted to serve in Naval Intelligence after law school, and I think adding you to Agent Gibbs' team for the duration of this case — and possibly of your internship — will serve both our goals and yours." Vance leaned forward, his hands planted on the top of the table. "Agent McGee and the rest of the team could use your help tracking the cartel's network and adding additional data as they collect it, and the analysis skills you learn in the process will serve you well in Naval Intelligence."

Josh nodded. "Yes, sir." He looked over at Agent Gibbs. "Maybe this means I can pay all of you, especially Tony, back for what you did for us after my dad was killed."

Gibbs just nodded, a single jerk of his chin, then turned to McGee. "You two, go, get started. David, see if Abby's got anything yet from the evidence at my house."

"Yes, Boss." McGee stood. "Come on, Josh." Ziva left with them too, but took the elevator to the lab. Josh followed McGee downstairs to where another agent was picking up papers off the desk in the cubicle next to McGee's.

"We're going to miss you on the team, Dwayne," McGee said. "You're still welcome at game nights, though."

"Thanks, McGee," the agent replied. "Once the girls finish with all the end of the school year craziness, we'll probably take you up on that." He lifted the small cardboard box off the desk. "If Sarah needs some extra eyes on guard, just let me know."

"Thanks," McGee said.

Josh wondered who Sarah was and what was going on, but he didn't think it was his place to ask. He must not have hidden his confusion well enough, though, because as McGee motioned toward the desk, he said, "Sarah's my younger sister. With the cartel gunning for the team, we're all being extra careful."

"How much younger?" Josh asked.

"Your age," McGee replied. "She just graduated from Waverley University this month, and she's working full time and writing a novel."

"Wow." Josh tried to imagine. "That's a lot of work."

"It is." McGee said. He immediately started explaining to Josh how to get into the programs they needed to track the drugs and dealers in the cartel. "I'll share my files with you so we can start figuring out where Reynosa is hiding. Before anything else happens."

Josh added that to the list of things he wanted to ask about and didn't dare. Maybe he'd figure it out the longer he worked with the team.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Once McGee and Cooper were gone, Gibbs waited for Leon to speak.

"Agent DiNozzo, tell me about Cooper," the director said.

DiNozzo looked startled, but didn't let it stop him. "He was 18 or 19 when a terrorist set a bomb in the bunker at the Army-Navy Club and killed his father, a Marine set to deploy the following week. Josh was headed to Princeton, but decided to drop out and enlist. The kid was out for revenge."

"What changed his mind?" Vance asked.

"He had a chance to think about it, and decided his dad would have wanted him to go to Princeton," DiNozzo said.

Gibbs lifted an eyebrow, but DiNozzo wasn't going to say anything else. Then Vance pulled a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

"When Cooper applied for the internship, he had to explain why he was interested in NCIS," Vance said. He unfolded the paper and started reading:

The first time I met an NCIS agent was after my father was killed by a terrorist, here, on American soil. I was mad, and ready to join up and run off to Iraq or Afghanistan to kill the people who killed my father. He talked me out of it, even though he's probably not supposed to. He is a Navy cop, after all. But he also promised me that they would get the man who killed my dad, and they did. It took them a while, and more people died. He never knew, but I followed what they were doing. When it was over, that's when I knew I had made the right decision: to get my degree, go to law school and join Naval Intelligence. But that's a long way off, and I want to give back now. Back then, he told me there was a right time and a right place, and then wasn't it. That was four years ago, and now I feel like this is the time, and NCIS is the place where I can give back.

Vance looked up. "There's more, but that's the part that's relevant. Agent DiNozzo, you made quite an impression on Josh Cooper."

Gibbs had to hide a smile at one of DiNozzo's rare speechless moments.

"He would have made the right decision," DiNozzo said after a moment. "The kid thought too much of his father to go against what his dad wanted. He just needed somebody to remind him of that. I was the one right there."

Vance looked over the top of the paper. "Be that as it may, this essay is one reason I'm placing Cooper with your team, at least for now." He paused and refolded the paper, tucking it away. "Now, let's figure out how we're going to catch Ms. Reynosa before anybody else gets hurt."

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Sarah felt like screaming when she took the call from one of the afternoon crew calling in sick for the day, but she managed not to snark on the phone. Caleb couldn't help being sick, and he sounded horrible on the phone. But she didn't have anybody else to call to cover, so that meant she was working a double. She took a minute to stretch out her back, then got back into the routine of helping the customers.

By the time the after-work crowd started coming in, Sarah felt like her lower back was on fire. She'd shifted to barista where she could work on auto pilot. While she was waiting for the espresso machine, she caught sight of a guy she didn't recognize. New grad student, she wondered? He looked about the right age, but she'd know him if he had been on campus. Waverley just wasn't that big. He wasn't drop-dead gorgeous, but he was cute in a "boy next door" kind of way. Not that she needed to be thinking of guys right now.

She shook her head a bit and focused on making the drink orders that were coming as fast as she could steam milk. She was just finishing up a drink when Linda, the afternoon manager, came over.

"Take 15," she said, then lowered her voice. "I can tell your back is killing you — go on out there and sit down for a while." She handed Sarah a medium iced tea, and Sarah knew without looking that it would be her favorite flavor.

Sarah nodded and snapped a lid on the cup, then set it on the counter. Before she could call out the order, Cute Guy stepped forward.

"Americano, extra shot?" he asked.

Sarah nodded, then smiled. "Enjoy." She took her tea and headed for one of the tables in a quiet corner of the coffee shop. The armchairs would be more comfortable, but Sarah knew she wouldn't want to get up. She settled down in the seat and propped her legs on the corner of the other chair, sighing in relief.

"Long day?"

Sarah looked up to see Cute Guy standing there, a messenger bag slung over his shoulder.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Josh waited in line at the coffee shop closest to his new apartment. His mother had wanted him to live at home, but she'd started dating somebody last year and Josh just thought the whole situation was a little too awkward. He had enough money from his grandfather to cover his living expenses, even if that meant the apartment was a studio with a leak in one corner of the kitchen.

As he moved over to the pick-up counter, he noticed how the barista managed to finish off his order without missing a beat, even as her manager came over and spoke to her and even though her skin was paler than it probably should have been and she had shadows under her eyes. Still, her smile when he stepped forward to take his drink was genuine. When she stepped out into the cafe, he lingered in the main section, watching to see where she went. When she picked a seat, he figured he'd go do a little flirting.

Then she sat down and sighed and Josh wondered if she was okay.

"Long day?" he asked.

The barista rolled her eyes. "Double shift because somebody called in. I opened this morning."

Josh winced. "Sounds like you've earned this break then, so I won't bother you."

"Did you need help finding something?" she asked, starting to get up.

"No, don't," he said. "I'm fine. And you'd probably like peace more than me hitting on you." He squeezed his eyes shut. "Sorry. I didn't-"

She snorted. "You're not subtle, are you?"

"I think the first day of my internship fried my brain," he said.

"Oh, so you're just here for the summer," she said. He thought she looked sad at that, but he had to be imagining it.

Josh shook his head. "Georgetown Law this fall, but I went to high school in northern Virginia, so I figured I'd move back early and try to get some experience. You?"

"Graduated in the spring and working here for now." She set her drink down, her now-free hand falling to her belly.

Josh blinked and realized his mistake. "Ah, sorry. Didn't mean to hit on somebody who's already taken."

"You didn't." The barista scowled. "He's long gone, and never coming back."

Josh wondered if it was even possible to keep his feet out of his mouth. "So he's an idiot is what you're saying."

That got a laugh out of her. "I think that's the most printable word either of my brothers have used for him." She snickered a bit more. "Thanks, I needed that today." She smiled at him. "I'm not taken, but right now, I'm trying to keep things simple. If you're still interested in the spring, let me know." She swung her legs down and started to stand. Josh offered a hand, which she took.

"Thanks," she said.

"My father would never forgive me if I didn't," Josh said. "I'm sure I'll be seeing you before spring, but I promise not to hit on you until then."

The barista headed back to work, still laughing, and Josh decided he'd head back to his place now so he didn't press his luck. But he did check the shop's hours on the way out. One day working with Gibbs' team had convinced him coffee wasn't optional, and this was the closest cafe to his apartment. Seeing the barista in the morning would just be a bonus.


	6. Chapter 6

It wasn't until Wednesday that Ziva had time to cook for everybody. Ducky had given Gibbs a talking-to about working hours and Gibbs had actually listened. Tony started making movies references to pea-people. No, pod-people. She did not understand, but McGee had laughed, so she assumed it was a movie reference.

She did not want to heat up the kitchen too much, even with the air conditioning finally working again, but she also did not want to use the grill. She preferred not to be outside and exposed in that manner with the cartel on the loose. Scanning the groceries Damon had picked up the day before, she pulled out eggplant and began slicing. She had enjoyed Tony's baked eggplant parmesan the one time he had made it for the team, and the recipe would make enough for all of them to have lunch at least once this week, possibly twice. She focused on first peeling, then slicing the purple and white vegetable, careful to ensure the slices were precisely the same thickness from end to end and compared to each other. By the time she was done, the oven was preheated and she was able to dip the eggplant in the egg and breadcrumbs before placing it on a cookie sheet. She did not allow the egg to drip on the counter, and once she had the eggplant oven-fried and assembled with the sauce and cheese, she wiped everything down and began washing the dishes. By the time the timer beeped, all her dishes were washed and put away.

"We have a dishwasher, you know." Damon's voice in the doorway made Ziva start, the knife she was putting away clattering against the rest of the silverware.

"There was no need," she said. "It gave me something to do until dinner was finished." She checked the time. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to change before dinner."

Damon moved to let her through, and she headed upstairs. Dinner would be all three of them, and that surely would be easier.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NICS~**

By the end of the week, Tim was ready to beat his head against the computer monitor.

"Another dead end?" Tony asked. Tim would have growled at him, but Tony set down a latte in front of him, along with three of his mom's snickerdoodles.

"Where did you get those?" he asked.

"She sent in a tin with Gibbs today for him to give me to dole out to you when you needed them," Tony said. "I think she sent one in for Ziva to bring home to Sarah, too."

"Cookies are not going to make things better," Tim said, but he was quick to snatch the napkin full of treats away from Tony. He took the lid off his coffee to dip on in the steaming drink and stifled a yawn. "Josh, please tell me you have something."

The intern's head popped over the wall. "Not yet," he said. "But Ziva just sent me more transactions from a source of hers, so maybe those will point us someplace useful."

"Ziva, did you send Josh one that says 'Paloma Reynosa is here'?" Tony asked.

"Did I what?" Ziva looked up and the expression on her face almost sent Tim into a fit of the giggles, but he fought it off, knowing he was so loopy that once he started, he wouldn't stop.

"Knock it off, Tony," Tim said. "We need to find something, soon."

"Yes, please," Ziva said. "Sarah is already chapping at the bit under the constraints."

"Chafing, Ziva," Tony said.

"I'd feel better if we could just find this woman," Tim said. "How is she managing to evade us and the DEA, not to mention every local law enforcement agency along her pipeline?"

"Are you sure she's still in the U.S.?" Josh asked. "Maybe she went back to Mexico."

"I have not picked up any chatter from my sources to that effect," Ziva said. "I almost wish I had. At least then she would be out of our heads."

"Our hair," Tim said, but he was already turning back to his computer. "Josh, you might have given me an idea." He bent over his keyboard, testing out new searches that might turn up clues. A possession arrest here, a weapons charge there — they all told a story if you could connect the dots. Tim was determined to figure out what picture was there before anybody else got hurt.

"OK, McGeek, time to call it a night." Tony's hand on his shoulder startled McGee, and he looked up to see that even the long summer day had finally called it quits, the sky completely dark. The lights were low in the squad room.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Quarter past midnight, and even Gibbs left an hour ago," Tony said. "Come on."

Tim groaned. Then he tried to straighten up his spine and he really was in pain. "Ow." He rolled the shoulder that still bore pink scars from when he got shot earlier in the year. "Why didn't I get up and move around?"

Tony smirked and offered his hand to help pull Tim up. "I tried to say something about three hours ago, but you didn't even hear me," he said. "Boss said to let sleeping Tims lie."

"Gibbs did not say that," Tim retorted as he tried to get everything moving again.

"No, he head-slapped me and told me to chase you out of here by midnight," Tony said. "I wouldn't put it past him to have Abby check the security feeds tomorrow either, so let's get a move on."

"Paloma's on the loose and Gibbs didn't sleep at his desk?" Tim reached for his gear, but Tony was faster, slinging Tim's pack over his free shoulder.

"Jack's at the house." Tony headed for the elevator and Tim followed, his muscles stiff from hours of minimal movement. "I think he feels better where he can keep an eye on him."

Tim couldn't argue with that. Especially since he fell asleep almost as soon as he sat in the car. The next thing he knew, Tony was shaking him awake in their driveway.

"Come on, bedtime," he said.

Tim nodded, still groggy, and followed Tony in the apartment. He stripped and flopped into bed. He didn't even stay awake long enough to notice Tony join him.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

It had been a week since the meeting at Gibbs' house, and Sarah was starting to get used to her new routine. Damon dropped her off early enough to open the cafe each morning before he went to the gym. By the time she had everything up and running and the skeleton early-morning crew opened the cafe, she had learned to expect Georgetown Law to come in for his coffee. He got the same drink every time, and he would set up at a table for about a half hour with a laptop.

"Extra credit," was his only answer when she asked.

He'd kept to his comments from that first day. He was nice, but he didn't hit on her, and Sarah managed to resist the urge to flirt. When she didn't look like a hippo she could see if he was interested. But she did watch, and he was nice to the few people in there that early. Sarah almost wished he would come in later so she could find out his name. They never had enough people to take names for drinks at that hour and by the time she realized she still didn't know, she felt weird asking.

He always left by 6:10, likely for his internship. So far this week Ducky had come in shortly before 6:30 three mornings to get a pastry and a coffee.

"Ducky, I didn't think you liked coffee," she asked on first time.

"My dear, I do not," the gentle Scotsman said. "Tea is my beverage of choice, but I am quite particular about its preparation and I prefer to make it myself once I have arrived at work." He held up the bag in his hand. "The scones are for me and young Mr. Palmer for our elevenses, assuming the criminals allow us to have a break. The coffee is for Gibbs, who is marginally less grouchy when he is caffeinated."

Sarah laughed. "So I've gathered," she said. "So now I'm one of Gibbs' suppliers? It's a good thing caffeine is legal."

"It is indeed, my dear," Ducky said, winking at her. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I must be on my way."

Some mornings they had time to talk, and some mornings all Sarah had time for was a greeting as she handed over Gibbs' coffee. She knew the drink must be tepid at best by the time Ducky made it across town to the Navy Yard, but she didn't point that out. If the medical examiner had decided to check up on her, she wasn't going to call him on it.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Tim refused to look behind him. The paper calendar he'd put there to mark the days until Sarah's baby — their baby — arrived now just mocked him. Each red X reminded him how many days since Paloma had shot up Jack's store and sent the team into defensive mode.

"We need to change things up," he said.

"Come again, McBabble?" Tony looked over at him.

"The Reynosas," he said. "Aren't you the one who always says you can't win without playing offense?"

"You're using a sports analogy?" Tony widened his eyes and sat up straight. "Who are you and what have you done with the real McGeek?"

"You are rubbing off on him, Tony," Ziva said.

Tim snickered at the look on Tony's face.

"What?" Ziva asked. "I know I got that one right — Damon said it yesterday."

"Different context," Tim said. "Tony's mind just went into the gutter."

"Does it ever come out of there?"

"Well, no," Tim replied to Ziva. "Guys, we're getting sidetracked. We need to figure out how to draw out Paloma and end this thing."

"Bait?" Tony asked.

"Gibbs will not go for it." Ziva said. "Abby and Ducky are the only two we know Paloma would treat as bait and neither Gibbs nor Jimmy will be happy if we want to hang them in front of Paloma."

"Dangle," Tony corrected, but his tone was abstracted.

"You have an idea?" Tim asked.

"Alejandro is still nominally neutral on this whole thing," Tony said. "If we can get him up here on some pretext, he'd make pretty good bait."

"Paloma will feel like she needs to protect him," Tim said, nodding. "He's a foreign official, though, Tony. If this goes wrong, we could cause an international incident."

"When was the last time that stopped us?" Tony asked.

"Agent DiNozzo has a point." Vance's voice came from above, and Tim turned to see Vance and Gibbs on the catwalk. "You three, my office, now. Cooper, keep digging."

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Tony led the way into the director's office. Gibbs stood against the wall inside the door, and Vance motioned them to the three seats in front of his desk.

"So, you have a plan." Vance didn't make it into a question, but Tony treated it that way.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Alejandro is Paloma's weak point — we've seen that. And he is a weak point in the cartel as well — he doesn't have her hard edge. He likes to think of himself as the brains of the family, even though he's not all that bright."

"Cunning," Gibbs said.

"Yeah, like a fox," Tony retorted. "But that's the best part of this. We make him think he's fooled us. McTim here is the one he thinks isn't too bright, which just shows how dumb Alejandro is. So we put McGee in MTAC as the operator and have him chat with Alejandro while he waits for Vance to come in. Tim lets something slip, and then we entice Alejandro to come up here, check things out for himself. While he's here, we pull a fast one on him and make Paloma think we have Alejandro. She'll come in after him, and then we'll be able to corner both of them.

"It's a risky proposition, Agent DiNozzo," Vance said.

"No, Director," Ziva said. "Tony has identified the target's weakness: her brother. It is our duty to play on that to end this. Before anybody else is hurt."

"Ziva's right," Tim said. "We can't keep up the level of protection you've given us for much longer, not without somebody wanting to know why. And you can't answer that question without raising more." Tim's look at Gibbs was subtle in a way their geek hadn't been capable of years ago. Tony grinned, almost bursting with pride in the team.

"See, director," Tony said. "It's a good plan."

"I'm not arguing with you, Agent DiNozzo." Vance stood and leaned over his desk, hands planted on the polished wood. "But it is risky, and we all know how much is at stake. We have to be absolutely sure of all the pieces before we put this into play. No going off half-cocked, any of you."

Tony turned to look at Gibbs, who just held up his hands.

"Good." Vance sat back down. "Now, what exactly are we going to do?"

"The report is Alejandro's weak point," Tim said. "He wants it, and he wants it badly. If I mention something about Abby and a report, that will pique his interest. And he knows Abby and I work together a lot, so even if he thinks she's trying to hide it, he won't be surprised to hear me say something."

"You must be convincing, McGee," Ziva said. "In an op like this, even the smallest mistake can be fatal." She tapped her fingers on the desk. "Director, I believe that once we begin this, we should put the most vulnerable members of the team, as well as family members such as Jack, into much stricter protective custody. If the target is the woman we've seen, she will stop at nothing while she is in the area, and she might well strike pre-emptively, especially if she thinks we have her brother. He is, as Tony says, the best bait, be he is also the bait most likely to to send her into a rage, one in which she will destroy anyone and anything that stands in her way."

"Ziva's right." Gibbs said. "Safe house, and one that's off the books. Fornell can help."

"I don't like asking other agencies for favors, but I think Fornell owes us a couple," Vance said. "This is worth it."

"What about Ducky, Abby and Jimmy?" Tim said. "We need them — Abby especially — here when Alejandro is in town or he'll suspect something. But they're also the ones Paloma's most likely to go after."

"They'll be safe," Vance said.

Tony watched as they hashed out the details of the plan, adding his own thoughts as they worked it out. Ziva had some very specific suggestions, and Tony agreed with them, even as they set off a warning in his gut. When Vance finally dismissed them, Tony let the other two go ahead of him, then stopped Gibbs.

"Got a minute, Boss?"

Gibbs nodded and motioned Tony down to the end of the hallway by the elevator, where nobody could get near them without being seen. He lifted an eyebrow.

"Boss, did you notice Ziva during that discussion?"

"Ziver had some good ideas," Gibbs said.

"But it was the way she talked," Tony said. "Always 'the target,' never Paloma like the rest of us. And she was analytical, almost clinical. It felt like she was working in a vacuum, like this was that stupid war game we planned out for Domino."

Gibbs just looked at him.

"Right, I know, get to the point." Tony tried to figure out exactly what his point was. "She just seems... weird," he said. "It's like the old Ziva, the one who was Ari's handler. The Mossad operative who could serve on Kidon. She's become that Ziva again, and it isn't who she is. She hasn't been like this since before Somalia."

"She said that part of her died out there," Gibbs recalled.

"It might have died, but she's resurrected it," Tony said. He hesitated, but decided this was too important. "Tim and I, we've been wondering about what she went through. She never talks about it, but something she said made us wonder if she was abused by Saleem and his men. She's been careful since she's been back — nothing that exposes her legs, even at the BBQ for Sarah's graduation. She's worn shirts that show the scars on her back if family is around. What if there are more scars, ones she won't show us?

"Passed a psych eval," Gibbs said.

"And how many of those did I pass over the years?" Tony rolled his eyes. "They're not going to catch things if she doesn't want them to."

Gibbs nodded.


	7. Chapter 7

_**AN:** Yes, Sarah and Josh will find out they have this connection through Tim and Tony at some point, but you'll have to be patient for a bit. I think you'll decide it's worth the wait. ;) Today's update's going a little early because I'm off to prep for NaNo over coffee and didn't want to make you guys wait until I finished with that. I went to an awesome writing workshop on ending yesterday led by Rebecca Makkai, so that's got me thinking about how I end stories and which ones are most effective when. I might be tweaking the ending of this slightly before it gets posted... Not a lot. Just language-wise. (Bonus: I know what the final scene in my four-book Mob Chronicles subseries in Exeter is! Now I just need to write books 2, 3 and 4 to get there...) _

* * *

After DiNozzo headed to the bullpen, Gibbs took the elevator down to autopsy. Duck wasn't there, so he decided to go all the way back upstairs. From the catwalk, he was able to watch the team and Josh Cooper without them noticing.

McGee was tapping away at his computer, conferring with Cooper periodically. McGee really had a knack for teaching what he knew, something Gibbs could recognize, even if his own style was different. This was a good chance for him to mentor somebody, see what he'd have to do more of as senior field agent — and to find his own style. He wasn't the type to haze like DiNozzo, and Ziva hadn't needed mentoring from McGee, not in most areas. This McGee was a true leader, something he'd grown into. After meeting Sean and getting to know him, Gibbs could see where he got it from.

DiNozzo, well, he was up to his usual antics. Gibbs could hear him playing the clown with the others. He let his lips quirk upward at the sound of a startled laugh from Cooper. The boy was obviously not expecting the team, not the way they really were. It wasn't the same team he'd met back then. Still he fit in. And Gibbs knew that a copy of that essay from Cooper was already in DiNozzo's file. Vance saved things like that — better at it than Gibbs. He could never remember the little things like that.

But as Tony kept up his rapid-fire commentary, Gibbs felt his legendary gut tighten. McGee just tuned it out, chiming in occasionally, but letting the sound roll over him. Must be a survival skill from living with all those words. Gibbs couldn't. His dad was chatty enough. And Jack wasn't near the talker Tony could be on a roll. DiNozzo could rival Abby when they both got going.

Cooper was getting sucked in occasionally, then visibly bringing himself back to work. Gibbs made a mental note. Goofing off was fine when the situation needed it. Tony had a finely tuned sense of that. But knowing when to buckle down and work was necessary, and Cooper seemed to recognize that. Good trait for a future officer.

Ziva, though, was like an island. She worked at her desk, ignoring the commotion around her. Not like McGee either, who was part of the flow, even if he tuned it out. Her frame was tense, her shoulders stiff. She did not look up, did not threaten to kill Tony with office supplies. DiNozzo was wrong. This wasn't the old Ziva. The old Ziva knew exactly how to play her role, to fit into the team by flirting with Tony and intimidating McGee. She did neither. She just ignored all around her. That couldn't last long.

Gibbs watched a while longer, then headed back to autopsy. Ducky should have some insight if any of them did.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Agent Gibbs came down to see Dr. Mallard today," Jimmy said as he sat on the floor in their apartment. "He wouldn't say what he wanted, but he looked worried."

Abby dropped her head down from the sofa so she was looking at him upside-down, her pigtails hanging down. "You can read Gibbs' face now? Go Jimmy!" She cheered, and promptly fell off the sofa to the floor. "Ouch."

"Are you OK?" Jimmy checked Abby over, but tried not to laugh. He didn't quite manage.

"It's OK," Abby said, giggling. "It was pretty funny. Good thing Tony wasn't around or I'd never hear the end of it."

Jimmy helped her up and stood to join her. "Time to make dinner, before we both get wacky. Wackier." he said. "Today was a crazy day, especially with the rest of the team doing, well, something."

"Timmy told me," Abby said. "They have a plan to trap Alejandro. I mean, they want to catch Paloma, bit they're going to use Alejandro as bait, so first they have to get him up here from Mexico and Timmy gets to play the idiot in MTAC and mention my report and make Alejandro think he can get it if he comes up here so then we'll have him and Paloma will come after him and we'll catch her and everything will be normal again."

Jimmy snickered. "Normal? Us?"

"Well, normal for us." Abby stuck her tongue out. "Now come on, let's eat."

By the time they were sitting down to eat some of Abby's mom's jambalaya recipe, Jimmy remembered the other weird thing from that day. "Abby, weren't you going to the doctor today?"

She shook her head. "Next week," she said. "Sarah and I figured it would be easier to get appointments at the same time, since our doctors are in the same practice."

Jimmy nodded. "So you are going next week, right?"

Abby nodded, but she used her fork to push things around on her plate instead of eating for the next few minutes.

"Abbs?" Jimmy asked.

"I'm just... What if she says it's too late and we can't?" Abby didn't look up. "I know I'm jumping to conclusions, and it's too early to say that and you gave me all the numbers about how a lot of women miscarry, but that doesn't mean I'm one of those women or that it's not too late for me, it just means I can use facts and figures and statistics to hide behind if I want to and-"

Jimmy put his finger to her lips. "Breathe, Abby," he said. "Look, you don't know she's going to say any of that. This is just a chance to go and make sure you're okay and figure out where to go from here. If she says we can't, we'll deal with it then. Whether you can have kids or you can't, it isn't going to change my mind about spending the rest of my life with you."

"Aww..." Abby smiled, then nibbled the tip of his finger. "Come on, let's clean up. Darren's on duty outside, we don't have any hot case right now and we can actually have some fun time together."

But by the time they finished the dishes and were in bed, Jimmy couldn't help but ask the questions that had nagged at him.

"What happens if this plan doesn't work?" he asked. "We're trying to bring Paloma here, but if she's here and she finds out about Sarah, this could go really bad really fast."

Abby pulled the sheet up almost to her ears, despite the heat. "I'm trying not to think about that," she said, her voice muffled by the cotton in front of it. "Ziva, too. I know she pretends everything's fine and she's over Somalia, but she told me she wasn't ready to date anybody yet, even though she's interested in Damon, and now she's living in the same house as him. I know she came up with that idea, but..."

"But you're wondering if she was thinking just as an agent, not about herself?" Jimmy knew Abby well enough to fill in the words she wasn't saying.

Abby nodded, her hair swishing against the pillow. "If I ask Ziva, she won't talk about it. I mean, come on, this is Ziva. She's worse than Tony or Gibbs about talking about things."

Jimmy couldn't help the chuckle that burst out. "I know, it's not funny," he said. "But you're right, she really is worse than them." He thought about it. "You know, she has talked to Dr. Mallard a few times," he said. "Especially after Ben-Gidon came back last fall to burn her. Maybe I can ask him about it?"

"That's it!" Abby sat up. "That's why Bossman was looking for Ducky today. It can't be a case — the cartel is the only one we have and I know Gibbs doesn't want to talk to Ducky about that one. But he would go to him if he was worried about Ziva."

"Then I'll go to Dr. Mallard tomorrow and make sure he knows three of us are worried," Jimmy said.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

The next morning, Ducky listened as Mr. Palmer explained his concerns. As he was finishing, Anthony walked into the room.

The next morning, Ducky listened as Mr. Palmer explained his concerns. As he was finishing, Anthony walked into the room.

"You too, Autopsy Gremlin?" he asked. "McWorry was tossing and turning all night, and if I hadn't been awake wondering the same things, he would have kept me up."

"Yes, I can see that you both are concerned," Ducky said. "I expect Abigail and Timothy would say the same, but you have chosen to be discreet and not have everybody piling in here to ask."

"Gibbs is worried, too," said Anthony. "I talked to him a couple of days ago and I'm pretty sure he came and talked to you. About Ziva that is. Although the Boss might have said something about Sarah — I'm sure Mom and Dad have been talking to him since the rest of us are lying low to keep them safe."

"As to that, I could not say," Ducky replied. "But I rather think both of you and your other halves could benefit from a bit of perspective. You see, it is human nature for us to want to help those we care about, and to worry about them. But there is a point where we need to recognize those situations where we can and should do something and those where we must just observe. At this point in time, I rather think both Sarah and Ziva are in the latter." He looked around, then added, "Of course, should we become aware of something that requires intervention, that is a different story. But I do not believe we are at that point at this particular moment." He hesitated. "I have been visiting Sarah's workplace some mornings, just to keep an eye on her as it were, and I shall endeavor to ask her about how things are going at home."

"Thanks, Ducky. We're trying not to intrude, especially since I think we all feel like we're still borrowing each others' homes," Anthony said. "And neither of us wants a Sarah tongue-lashing for babying her, because a ticked-off McSis is worse than Hurricane Abby."

Ducky reminded himself to commend Mr. Palmer later — he was keeping his snickers much less audible these days.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

McGee looked at the documents he'd found in his search — photos of Paloma and Alejandro as children, and then as teenagers. The earliest ones showed Pedro Hernandez, and McGee wondered once again why people didn't show their evil on their faces. It would make his job so much easier. In the later photos, the siblings still were close, but as they became adults and went their separate ways on the surface, there were fewer and fewer photos of them together. The ones he could find, though, showed the same look of love that he saw in the early ones, the same look he knew he would find in photos of himself and Sarah, and in the one photo of Ziva, Ari and Tali that he had seen.

That was a strong connection, and McGee was leading the charge to take advantage of that. Well, no, Tony was, but McGee was coming along right with him, and they would both go down together if this caused an international incident. He knew Tony didn't understand the bond between siblings, but he did. He thought Ziva did, too, as hard as she had fought her father when he initially ordered her to kill Ari. Tim couldn't imagine killing Sarah, much less on his father's orders. Then again, Sean McGee was as different from Eli David as was possible, and neither he nor Sarah was following in their father's deadly footsteps. Tim didn't actually know if his father had ever killed anybody in the line of duty, but Tim had, and he didn't think it was the same thing. He knew Eli David would argue that all the deaths he had caused, all the ones Ziva had caused, those too were in the line of duty. He didn't know if Eli would defend Ari, but he knew nobody else would. Kate didn't have to die that May morning. She hadn't done anything wrong.

That's where Tim could draw the line, where he found the ability to kill somebody and continue on. They had done something wrong. He'd gotten that from his dad and from Gibbs. Sometimes, people got caught in the crossfire. That time he thought he'd killed Benedict — really had killed Benedict, he figured, despite Abby's refusal to believe it — he'd initially reassured himself that Benedict was a dirtbag. Then he found out that Benedict was one of the good guys and he'd lost it. This time, he had no such doubts. Alejandro was in this up to his sleazy neck, and just because he wasn't actually the head of the cartel didn't mean anything as far as Tim was concerned. He was turning a blind eye to what his sister was doing at best, and giving her assistance using his post with the Mexican government at worst. That had to stop.

Still, Tim hesitated. He could just see the photo of Sarah on the wall behind his desk, the one Tony had taken of the two of them after graduation. In that one, you couldn't tell what was coming a few days later, her news that turned everything upside down. All you could see was two siblings, different as night and day in all the ways there were — all but one. They loved each other, and Tim would do anything to protect Sarah because he loved her and because that's what older brothers did. Paloma clearly was the same way. That's how they would get her. Tim tried not to think about the possibility Paloma was saying the same about him right now.


	8. Chapter 8

_**AN:** I don't know if it's people reading this story going to check out my original fiction or something weird like sunspots, but sales on my books are up enough that they're both top 100 for LGBT literary fiction, which totally made my day today. So if that is the reason and you're somebody who decided to try Exeter because you like my Breathe stories, THANK YOU!_

* * *

_Friday, August 6, 2010_

Damon sat at the kitchen table that morning watching the sun rise. He'd dropped Sarah at work because Ziva hadn't gotten in until almost 2 a.m. Damon kept the door to his room open at night so he could hear if anybody tried to break in, and she wasn't stealthy enough to avoid waking him up, not when he was back to sleeping the way he had during his tours, when a sound sleep was a luxury nobody could afford.

Ziva was stealthy, but Damon's combat reflexes were strong. Too strong, maybe. He was finding himself slipping back toward the state he had been in when he first returned — minus the steroid-induced psychosis. He never completely relaxed at home — only when he was at Bethesda or one of the other DC-area cases. Noises started to trigger him again, though the flashbacks weren't as bad.

More than two months had passed, and Damon wanted this to end. Not with Paloma, though he'd appreciate the chance to rearrange the bitch's face for what she'd done to the team. But moving into a house with two women — the one he was starting to care for more than he should and the one who was mercurial even when she didn't have every reason to be angry with the world — was difficult at best. And Paloma was making sure this was anything but a best-case scenario.

From the beginning, he'd decided he was staying downstairs as much as possible, to give both Ziva and Sarah their space. Sarah hadn't asked for this, any of it. And Ziva still hadn't given him any reason to think she was ready. He remembered the evening they had talked while watching out for Sarah's ex-boyfriend during Sarah's shift at the coffee house. Back then, it was Sarah's breaking point he worried about.

_"You never know what will push somebody over the edge," Damon said. "I don't want Sarah to break, and I know you don't either."_

_Ziva shook her head, but didn't say anything. She looked over at him, and he was surprised to see her eyes fill with tears. Ziva's lower lip quivered, almost imperceptibly. Damon had never seen this Ziva before, and it worried him. He reached across the table and turned his hands palm up, in front of her. "Ziva, tell me what you need." He waited for her to respond, and felt his shoulders begin to relax as she placed her hands lightly on his._

_"I do not..." She paused, and Damon forced himself to be patient. "Damon, if I tell you everything, you will not think about me the same way. I am... I am not like you." She looked down at the table. "There are things in my past, things I would not ask anybody to accept."_

_"But you're not asking, Ziva." Damon waited until she looked up before continuing. "I'm offering. McGee told me about your brother and about your father. I've been around long enough to have a sense of what happened last summer, and I know when you tell me what they did to you, I'll be glad Gibbs and the team killed those guys, because otherwise I'd go hunt them down for hurting you."_

_"You-?"_

_"Ziva, I served in the Middle East. I know-" He broke off, remembering. "I know what they do to women in the terrorist camps, what they think of them. I don't know exactly what they did to you, but I can guess."_

_She looked down, her entire body still. "And the others?"_

_"They worry about you, Ziva. I think they'd would worry less if they knew you had talked to somebody or were talking to somebody about it."_

_She swallowed and looked up. "Ducky... When Mossad came, he tried to get me to talk."_

_Damon nodded, but waited for her to continue. "He asked me to let him be a friend, to talk to him."_

_"Did you?"_

_She shook her head. "I could not," she said. She paused, and Damon made himself stay quiet. "To come back to NCIS, I could not afford to talk. If I did, I was afraid I could not put the pieces back together. Physically... I was barely holding on. My body had been badly abused, and it took me many weeks to heal. It took me two months to become an agent, but I would not have been cleared for the field before that." She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. "I still..." Her voice trailed off, and she looked up at him. "I would have had to trust the agency psychologist to understand that I needed to come back to NCIS to finish healing. But as I told Tony after I returned, I had trusted Ari, my father, and Michael, and each betrayed me. I..." Her voice trailed off._

_"So now you don't trust anybody," Damon said, finally realizing she wasn't going to finish the thought._

_Ziva pulled her hands away, then wrapped them around his, though they were half the size. "I trust Gibbs, Tony, McGee, because they came after me, even after everything. Ducky, Abby, Jimmy, the rest of the team, the McGees — even you. You, they, are mishpocheh, family. More family than anybody I share blood ties with. All of you, I trust, but-"_

_"But?"_

_"But I still cannot talk about what happened. It was... too much. And especially now, with everything else."_

_"Sarah, and Josh. What Josh is doing."_

_Ziva nodded. "It is not only physical damage that men can inflict upon women, but other damage as well. Sarah will never deal with what I had to physically, none of it." Her eyes blazed, and Damon knew if Josh ever tried to hurt Sarah, Ziva wanted to be first in line to make him pay. "But-" She broke off, and dropped her eyes. Her hands loosened from where she had wrapped them around Damon's and fell away._

_"We're going to find a way to stop him, Ziva," he said. "And when you're ready to talk..." He searched for the words. "I will be here. No matter what you say, no matter what happened." He waited until she looked up at him. "We've got Sarah's back. We've got yours, too."_

Evil Josh, as Abby called him, was out of the picture. Sarah seemed to be coming to terms with everything, now that she'd made a decision about the baby. Even the ever-present threat of Paloma Reynosa seemed to be more a cloud in the air for Sarah than the intense fear that first week she was after the team. Damon could see Sarah relaxing as the days went by and nothing happened.

Ziva, though, was not relaxing. When they first met, he had been intrigued by this powerful woman, one who could take him down even though he was barely sane at the time. He'd never quite gotten her out of his mind. When they met again last year, he could tell she was different. Just as sharp in the field, but not as hard as she had been when they first met. Then again, neither was he.

When Tim had told him a few months ago about how Ziva killed her brother — how her father had ordered her to do it — he couldn't quite reconcile that Ziva with the woman he knew. Even knowing she was Mossad, he couldn't see it. Now he could. She said the right things, smiled in the right places. But it didn't feel real.

He knew about acts. He had to use one himself some days so nobody would question how bad the flashbacks had gotten. His only question was what exactly was bothering Ziva.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

The next evening, Sarah made herself turn away and head upstairs. Alone. But she wasn't looking where she was going and bumped into Ziva, who was coming downstairs.

"Are you all right?" Ziva asked.

Sarah nodded and headed upstairs. Damon didn't need to hear this. She wasn't surprised when Ziva followed her.

"You are not all right," Ziva said. She stood in the door to Sarah's room as Sarah sank down on the bed she hadn't bothered to make that morning. '

"No, I'm not." Sarah shook her head. "I mean, I'm fine. Nothing's wrong."

"Sarah." Ziva's tone was even, but demanded an answer.

"I'm fine Ziva." She sighed. "It's just..." She tried to think about how to explain it. "It's like my body's gone all crazy." She grabbed the book from her nightstand. I mean, I knew this was coming. I read about it. All the books said I'd get crazy horny and I thought they were lying. I mean, look at me. I'm not even sure how I would have sex with my belly taking over the world. But it doesn't take anything before I'm dying to, and when Damon comes in from his run with just a pair of shorts on." She looked around, realizing she'd said that out loud. "Never mind. Don't tell him I said that."

Ziva shook her head. "I will not." She took a deep breath. "Sarah, your body is doing these things for a reason."

"Yeah, and if I was dating somebody, he'd be happy that I wanted sex all the time," Sarah said. "But I'm not, so all this does is make me want to jump people I shouldn't be thinking about jumping."

"Like Damon," Ziva said.

"Oh, Ziva, not like that." Sarah clapped her hand over her mouth. "I know you two are dating. It's not like that. It's just that when I see him, I can't help thinking it. Just like when this cute grad student comes by the coffee shop, I can't help thinking I want to throw myself at him, even though I don't know what I'd want with me, not like this." She grimaced. "I told him if he was still interested in the spring, to let me know, but that's just wishful thinking on my part."

"You are concerned that you will do something inappropriate?" Ziva said.

"No, not really. I mean, yes, kind of." Sarah buried her face in her hands. "Ziva, what should I do? I'm afraid I'm going to do something stupid."

Ziva didn't speak for a minute, so Sarah looked up.

"You could not do something stupid in front of Damon," she said.

Sarah giggled. "Yeah, I guess after I went ballistic on him for forgetting to throw out the milk last week, he's pretty much decided he's living with a crazy person until I pop out the McBaby."

Zvia smiled. "He is not thinking that, I am certain," she said. "But he does know you are going through many things and you do not always want to do what you find yourself doing."

"Yeah, like drinking milk." Sarah made a face. "I swear, I should make Tim and Tony drink milk like me for the next few months."

Ziva smiled. "I believe they would slip it into their coffee, which you cannot do."

"Yeah, sure, rub it in." Sarah flopped down on the bed, knowing she could only do that for a minute before she would need to roll to her side. "I'm ready to get my life back," she said.

"You will," Ziva said. It will take a while longer, but you will get back to where you once were." She paused. "You will not be the same though, and you should not expect to be. Anything like this, any major event, changes you. You will not be the person you were before."

Sarah rolled to her her side, away from Ziva. She stayed like that until she heard Ziva leave. "I know," she said to herself. "That's what I'm afraid of."

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Ziva left Sarah's room and went to her own. This would end soon. McGee had started his part of the trap today in a call with Alejandro, and she was sure things would begin to happen soon. Before she could do anything else, her phone buzzed.

"David."

"Body in West Virginia, body in Maryland," Gibbs said. "McGee and DiNozzo are headed to West Virginia. I'll pick you up. Put Damon on alert. It's Paloma."

Ziva nodded as Gibbs disconnected and reached for cargo pants, boots and a short-sleeved shirt she would not miss if it got covered in blood. She changed and was headed downstairs within 10 minutes, her steps quiet so as not to alert Sarah.

Damon was in the living room. She took her SIG from the gun safe. "It begins," she said. "Do not let anything happen to Sarah."

He set down his book — something on combat trauma — and checked the gun on the end table next to him to make sure everything was in order. "Be careful out there."

"Always." Ziva said. She left the house, determined not to return until Paloma and the cartel were finished.

* * *

_AN: And everybody's seen Spider and the Fly, I hope, because we're not rehashing those few days. Instead, we're skipping to after the cartel is vanquished._


	9. Chapter 9

_AN: First, some cheering from my original fic side: Both my books cracked the top 25 in their category at Amazon last night! If you bought one (or both) thank you! You rock! I'd post the picture here, but FF doesn't allow that. But it's on my FB author page (facebook dot com slash JennieCoughlinExeter) if you want to see. Also photos of my NaNo plotting insanity - I have GIANT sticky notes all over my living room wall. _

_Second, this chapter is short, about half the length of the ones we've seen so far. The next one is long, about twice the length, and has a scene I know some of you have been eagerly awaiting. So, do you want me to post a second chapter tonight, or do you want Chapter 10 tomorrow to help you get through hump day/pre-Halloween? If you've got an opinion, please let me know in comments. _

* * *

_Monday, August 9, 2010_

By the time they got back to the Navy Yard after the shootout at the safe house, the team was dragging. Tony saw McGee listing to the left, a sure sign his shoulder was starting to bother him. Ziva was sitting up straight on her side of the car, not a bit of softening as concession to the fact that they had been running nonstop since this whole mess kicked off a few days ago. Gibbs was looked gray around the edges, as though he needed sleep. Tony often wondered if the man got any sleep that wasn't under a boat, but this time he was pretty sure it was stress, not stubbornness that had kept Gibbs awake. At least he knew Jack would make sure Gibbs went to bed, even if he had to pull out his shotgun and threaten him. Jack had refused to leave Stillwater without the weapon he'd used to threaten Paloma Reynosa, and Tony wouldn't bet against him pulling it out if he thought Gibbs needed the reminder that Jack wasn't going to take no for an answer.

Once they unloaded their gear from the car, Gibbs waved a hand toward the parking lot.

"Go home, all of you. Get some sleep. Take tomorrow off."

"Really, Boss?" Tony asked. "You sure? Because last time you gave us the day off-" He broke off as he remembered the last time — the day after Kate's funeral. He would have done the same after Jenny's, but Vance had been too busy shipping them out to the four corners of the globe. "Right, Boss. Taking a day off."

Tim turned to Ziva. "Make sure Sarah knows she can stop having a guard dog," he said. "Between Evil Josh Watch and the protection detail, I'm surprised she hasn't ripped into one of us yet for being protective."

"Oh, she has," Ziva said. "You should ask Damon about last week." Although her lips curved up, it wasn't a smile, not a real one. Tony stifled a sigh, then thought of a plan.

"Hey, Zee-vah," he said. "Now that things are back to normal, we should do a game night."

She nodded. "Certainly, Tony. But why are you telling me?"

"You've got the house," Tony said. "Unless you think we can fit all of us in your old apartment and you guys can deal with Jethro being upset that you all went out without him."

"We all go out without him every day," Ziva said. "But you are correct, you do not have room. I will check with the others, then let you know."

Tim spoke up. "We should invite Josh Cooper, too. If he wants to come, that is. He's part of Team Gibbs for a while."

"I will do that," Ziva said.

"Tomorrow night, though, right Tony?" Tim said. "I'm exhausted, and you can't tell me you aren't."

"Yes, McSandman, tomorrow," Tony said.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Damon sat on the sofa in the living room pretending to read through casefiles for work. He'd been through them already that day at the office, but they made a good cover for being out in the common areas and keeping an eye on Sarah — and an ear out for trouble from the drug cartel.

He saw headlights turning into the driveway and moved his hand over to the table where the gun Vance had issued to him rested. But Jethro was bouncing and wagging his tail, not growling, so he wasn't surprised to see Ziva walk in a moment later.

"Hey, Ziva," he said, smiling as she set her backpack on a hook by the front door.

"You can stand down, Damon," she said. She scanned the room, then called Sarah, who was in the kitchen making tea.

"I'm here," Sarah said as she entered the room. "Is something wrong?"

Ziva shook her head. "Quite the opposite," she said. "We managed to end things with the drug cartel tonight, so the threat is over."

Sarah grinned. "No more babysitters?"

"No," Ziva said. "You are free to do what you wish."

Sarah cheered and danced around the room.

Damon knew he should be celebrating with Sarah, but as he looked at Ziva, something nagged at him. "Nobody got hurt, right?"

At his words, Sarah stopped cheering, and Ziva was quick to respond. "Nobody on our side is hurt." Her lips twisted into a mockery of a smile. "The other side, however, was not as fortunate." She turned to look first at Damon, then back at Sarah. "Neither of you need to worry. They are gone, and they will not be able to bother us again."

But her words and actions didn't match. She still held herself in heightened awareness, the way he and his fellow Marines did on patrol. He had seen it from her on duty, and here at home since this arrangement had started, but he didn't expect to see it now.

"We need to do something to celebrate," Sarah said.

"Oh, yes. We are hosting game night tomorrow." Ziva moved her shoulders in an imitation of a shrug. "Perhaps you and your brother can sort out the details tomorrow, when we all have had some sleep."

That's when Damon noticed the shadows below her eyes and the faint lines at the corner, signs of fatigue he should have noticed immediately. "OK, that's it, time for bed," he said. "Especially if we're hosting one of those insanityfests you people call Game Night."

Sarah opened her mouth to argue, then yawned. "Never mind." She wrinkled her nose. "Guess my tea can be iced tea in the morning." She headed back into the kitchen. Damon took that opportunity to approach Ziva, though he was careful to stay a few feet away.

"Now that I'm not the watchdog, I'll be shutting my bedroom door at night," he said.

Ziva nodded. "As you prefer," she said. "You are right, it is time to call it a night." She headed upstairs, her back still ramrod straight.


	10. Chapter 10

_**AN:** Thanks for all the comments. As you guessed, I waited to give you something meaty to digest on hump day. Also, remember all those warnings at the beginning of the story? They don't all come into play in this chapter, but several of them do. _

* * *

Josh pulled up outside the address Tony had given him when he'd called yesterday. There were plenty of cars, and he recognized Ziva's Mini Cooper and Tony's Mustang, so he was pretty sure he was in the right place.

Still, he hesitated a bit as he got out of the car and locked it. Working with the team was one thing, but this social event was more. At least he didn't see Agent Gibbs' pickup truck around. Maybe he could be hiding in a corner when Gibbs came in, out of the way. The team leader still intimidated him after almost two months.

As he headed up the driveway, a bright red hot rod pulled up. Josh wasn't really surprised to see Abby and Jimmy get out of that car — it almost had to be Abby's car.

"Hey, Josh!" Abby waved and bounced her way up the driveway in a pair of long shorts and leather tank top. It should have looked ridiculous, but it didn't.

"I think this is the first time I've seen you not in a skirt," he said.

"Twister," Jimmy said as he joined them.

Josh just stared at the assistant medical examiner, whom he still didn't know all that well.

"Jimmy's right," Abby said. "Playing Twister in a skirt with this bunch just sends us even deeper into the gutter, and Tony would totally get a concussion from head-slaps."

Josh just nodded and followed them up the driveway. Abby didn't even knock, just walked inside, where the air wasn't any cooler than outside.

"Down, Jethro," she said as a big German retriever tried to knock her over.

"Sorry," McGee said, running over to pull the dog off her. "He's wound up to see me and Tony again." McGee snapped his fingers and pointed to the living room and the dog walked off, tail drooping. "Hey, Josh. Welcome to the insanity. The hot insanity — the AC stopped working earlier today."

Josh replied, then turned to Jimmy. "Why is Ziva's dog so excited?"

Jimmy laughed. "Jethro — Abby named him — is McGee's dog. This was McGee and Tony's house, but they switched with Ziva and Sarah after Paloma came back. It's kind of a long story."

"Everything's a long story with this crowd," said a man who'd walked in behind them.

"Hey, Brad," Jimmy said. "Josh Cooper, this is Brad Pitt. He's a Navy doctor at Bethesda and an honorary Gibblet."

They exchanged greetings, and Josh laughed when Brad gave what had to be a practiced line about yes, that was his real name.

"So how did you get adopted into Team Gibbs," Brad asked.

"I'm interning at NCIS and the director assigned me to the team," Josh said. "They helped find the terrorist who killed my dad a few years ago."

"Wow." Brad paused. "I'm sorry about your dad, but glad you got the best team in NCIS on the case." At the sound of Tony and McGee bickering in the living room, he added, "Not to mention the least sane. Hope you're ready for a wild night."

"I think I can handle it," Josh said. He followed Brad into the main part of the living room where everybody was clustered. He knew pretty much everybody there, and he followed Ziva's instructions toward the kitchen to make himself a pizza.

He walked into the room and stopped when he saw who was there.

"Um, hi," he said. He stopped when he saw a woman at the counter and a man pulling a pizza from the oven.

"Oh, hey, you must be the guy who's interning with the team," the man said as he stood. "I'm Damon, and this is Sarah, McGee's sister."

"Why am I always Tim's sister when you guys are intro-," the woman said, breaking off as she looked back over her shoulder at them.

"You're McGee's sister?" Josh tried to reassemble the bits of his brain.

"Your internship is at NCIS?" asked the barista. McGee's sister. Sarah. Whoever she was.

"You two know each other?" Damon asked.

"He's a regular at the coffee shop in the morning," Sarah said. She stooped to slide her pizza in the oven. "We talk, but we never really introduced ourselves."

Damon smiled. "Tony is going to have a field day with this one." Damon picked up his plate of pizza. "Everything you need is right here — Sarah can help you if you can't find something."

"Thanks," Josh said. He moved over to the counter and saw the balls of dough and cups of toppings. "Wow, you guys go all out," he said.

"It started as therapy for Tim's shoulder after he got shot earlier this year," she said. "But we all thought it was too delicious to stop, even if they do make me eat in another room."

Josh turned and stared at her. "Why-?"

Sarah laughed. "My pizza toppings are... Well, Abby calls them unique. Everybody else says they're gross."

"Does the peanut butter sitting here come into it?" Josh asked as he rolled out his crust and started laying sauce, cheese, sausage and pepperoni on it.

Sarah nodded, her cheeks turning a little pink. "And pickles and hot sauce. I skipped the hot sauce this time, though — it's a little too much these days." She rested a hand on her belly, then used her other hand to pick up a glass of water.

"Oh, so this isn't-"

Sarah shook her head. "Tony said he thought maybe I'd start wanting normal pizza now, but I haven't." She rolled her eyes.

"Hey, no talking about me when I'm not here," Tony said as he walked in. "Sarah, there's a Scrabble game starting after we eat if you want to kick McWordy's ass again. Josh, how do you feel about Clue?"

"Josh?" Sarah set her glass of water down on the counter with a click.

"Oh, yeah, introductions never got finished," Josh said. "I'm Josh Cooper."

"Josh, why don't I get you set up with the Clue fiends," Tony said. "Sarah, can you throw his pizza in when your monstrosity is done?"

Sarah nodded and Josh let Tony hustle him into the living room. He wanted to ask, but Tony looked serious, and Josh figured he probably shouldn't. Sarah, McGee's sister, was a whole different situation than when she was just the barista he was attracted to, and he needed to figure out what that meant before he did anything else.

An hour, a pizza and a game of Clue later, Josh was happy to just sit on the floor and chill out while the Scrabble game entered the last few rounds. Sarah and McGee sounded like siblings as they snarked back and forth, but then again, listening to Abby and Brad join in the conversation made it impossible to tell which ones were related, though Abby was flirting with Tim as much as snarking at him. Neither Jimmy nor Tony seemed to mind, though, and nobody else seemed to notice.

Josh looked around. Ziva sat on the floor, with Damon next to her. The former Marine was relaxed, his legs crossed at the ankles as he leaned against the wall. Ziva sat cross-legged, her posture straight so that her head was the same height as Damon's was with his slumped form. Damon was talking, but Ziva seemed to only have brief replies. She rarely said much, at least from what Josh had seen. He'd thought it was just her work mode, but she was the same here at home, so apparently not. Then again, Tony and Tim sounded about the same here as at work. They just sounded like an old married couple at work, too. Jimmy sat on one of the chairs, a smile on his face as he watched Abby. Josh realized that Jimmy was probably the closest to his own age, except for Sarah, and made a point to try to get to know the assistant ME better during the rest of his internship. It was hard to think of the team as anything but adults, even though they treated him like an equal. Jimmy seemed more like somebody Josh could be friends with.

Tony was over at the piano playing jazz, and Josh couldn't help remembering listening to records with his dad on Sundays. He still listened to those same albums more Sundays than not, though he'd gotten them on CD when he went back to school so he didn't have to risk the originals in the dorm. He still could remember the day he was listening to them when Tony came by to talk with him. Tony was right, Coltrane wasn't his thing back then. He never would have guessed it was Tony's, but here he was, playing in a way that reminded Josh of those early Sundays when listening to the music hurt as much as it helped.

When Jimmy went to let the dog out back, Josh followed.

"Need a break from our crazy already?" Jimmy asked as they stood on the back steps.

"My dad and I always used to listen to jazz together," Josh said.

Jimmy nodded. "You can hang out here with Jethro for a bit," he said. "I think Damon did the same thing the first few times after he came back. We can be a little overwhelming."

"Came back?"

Jimmy explained about Damon's background, and Josh enjoyed listening. He figured he could find out about the others, too. "And Brad? I thought he and Tony might be college friends at first, then they started in on the heckling."

As Jimmy told the story of a woman driven mad by a brain tumor and a 12th-century disease returned to the present, Josh shivered despite the August heat. "You people are insane, you know that, right?"

"You get used to it after a while," Jimmy said. "And except for Damon, Ziva and Sarah, we were all around for the plague."

"Ziva wasn't on the team then?"

Jimmy shook his head. "No, she joined later. Kate was on the team then." He hesitated. "She died a few weeks later in the line of duty."

"Oh." Josh didn't know what to say about that.

"We don't like to think about it, but it happens," Jimmy said. "Even Abby and I have been shot at — different cases, though — and we're not agents. Damon seems to handle it pretty well, but he was in combat, so he knew what he was getting into with Ziva."

Josh turned to look at Jimmy. "Wait, Ziva?"

Jimmy turned bright red. "I shouldn't have said anything." He dropped his eyes to the ground. "Abby's going to kill me." He straightened up. "Look, forget I said anything. Damon and Ziva aren't dating yet, and even though we all know it's going to happen, they've got reasons for taking it slow."

Josh debated whether he should ask the question he'd been wondering about all evening — longer, if he forced himself to be honest.

"And Sarah?"

Jimmy sighed. "It's not really my story to tell."

"I know Sarah doesn't want to talk about it," Josh said. At Jimmy's raised eyebrows, he replied, "She works at the coffee shop where I stop in the morning. We've been talking. But we never exchanged names until I walked in here tonight."

"Talking?"

"Yes, talking," Josh said. "And before I put my foot in it with McGee, Tony or Sarah, I'd really like to know at least the basics."

"Tony and McGee are adopting Sarah's baby," Jimmy said. "But that wasn't the plan. Sarah had a bad breakup earlier this year — bad enough that we were worried we might have to get Metro PD involved to stop him from harassing her. She didn't find out Evil Josh had knocked her up until later."

"Evil Josh?" He thought back to the moment he'd introduced himself. "Let me guess, none of you told her my name is also Josh when you organized this thing."

Jimmy's mouth dropped open. "Oh, shit," he said. "No, and that was bad. We should have thought of that after all the grief he caused."

"You're saying I should tread carefully," Josh said.

"The last guy who hurt Sarah had all of us, including Agent Gibbs and Dr. Mallard, focused on stopping him," Jimmy said.

Josh didn't need to be told twice. When Jimmy headed inside, Josh stayed on the back porch steps. A few minutes later, the back door smacked shut and he looked up to see Sarah lowering herself onto the step next to him.

Have we scared you off yet?" she asked, her tone light.

"Are you trying to?"

"Tony and Tim can be pretty intimidating," she said.

"They're not really the ones I'm worried about." Josh turned slightly so he could face her. "I didn't ask before about-" He wondered what the best word was. "About the baby's father. You seemed pretty mad at him."

"I am."

"It's not any of my business."

"It's not." Sarah sat up straight, but her hands never stopped moving.

Josh reached over and put his hand over one of them. "Tony was there to listen to me when I needed it a few years ago, and I would have done something stupid if he hadn't been. I know you've got lots of people around to talk to — but if you ever need one more, just let me know."

Sarah put her free hand on top of his, sandwiching it between her smaller ones. "Thank you." She leaned into him, her head resting against his shoulder. "Any of them can tell you the basics," she said. "The rest of it — that's a conversation for when all my honorary big siblings aren't around."

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

It was after ten by the time everybody left, and Sarah couldn't stop yawning as they started to clean up.

"We have this," Ziva said. "You are opening tomorrow, yes?"

"Yeah." Sarah rolled her eyes. "Up at the crack of dawn again."

"You should go to bed," Ziva said. "We can clean up."

After another couple of protests, Sarah finally conceded and headed upstairs. While they had been talking, Damon had cleaned up most of the living room. Ziva went to the kitchen and started loading the dishwasher.

"You're still worried about her." His voice startled her. "Even with Paloma gone."

She turned to see him standing there, close. Too close. His tank top did not hide his muscles, the ones that could overpower her if she was not careful. The low yellow light shone on his sweat-damp skin that was only shades lighter than hers, his dark hair cropped close. His-

There was no chain around his neck, no string of silver balls leading to dog tags. She was in the kitchen, not on the Damocles. This was not Daniel Cryer, it was Damon. Not their guide, but her boy- her friend. Not a victim of her father's mission, but of her own.

Ziva forced her heart rate to even out, controlling her breathing to moderate it. "She is my sister," she said. "Not by blood, but I imagine this is how I would feel had Tali lived." It was true, though she was saying something very different than she knew Damon would hear.

"She's managing fine," Damon said. "We talk sometimes, when I'm picking her up at work. She's been worried with the cartel out there, but she's a lot stronger than I think she gets credit for. She'll be fine."

Ziva nodded. "We all are relieved that this has ended." She returned to stacking dishes.

"I think Jimmy especially," Damon said. "When Abby was talking earlier about her doctor's appointment next week and hoping nothing was wrong with her, I heard him muttering and he seems glad that things can get back to normal."

Ziva nodded. "As he should be." She put the last dish in the dishwasher. "It is late," she said. "Goodnight, Damon." She did not wait for a reply, but walked past him and headed upstairs.

Once in the room that still did not feel like her own, she stripped down and prepared for bed automatically. She kept her lotions in her room rather than the bathroom she shared with Sarah. As she got into bed and turned out the light, she practiced techniques she had learned many years ago to find some sleep.

_Ziva lay on the narrow pallet in the earthen cell in Saleem's encampment in the desert, the afternoon sun creating patterns on the ochre-colored walls as it came in through slits cut near the top of the walls. She watched the changing light and shadow to give her mind something to focus on other than what the men had done to her. She thought of her Magen David lying in the dust in Saleem's interrogation cell. It had so many meanings for her: Her faith, her homeland. Her father, who had been known by that nickname as he rose in Mossad's ranks, his star rising even as their family fell to pieces. But mostly, the literal translation of the Hebrew, the shield of David. It had been her shield, always. When Cryer discovered it on the ship, she used it and all it stood for as her armor, the way she had always done. The way she thought she always would and could do. Now, it was gone. Her father had abandoned her on this suicide mission, the way he had abandoned Ari all those years earlier. She forced her eyes to track and note the position of the triangles of sun on the walls because it was the only way she could forget._

_She blamed that later on why she did not hear the men coming. Not Saleem this time, but one of his men. The man stood over her, his gun aimed at her heart._

_"What is wrong with you?" he said. "You are not a woman, you filthy Jew. You should be home, fat with your man's babies, more mongrels that attack my people and deserve to be shot and die a painful death." His eyes raked over her. "Your men, they are weak to send you to do their jobs." He reached down and pulled her to her feet, then backhanded her into the wall._

_Her body was too weak from lack of food and her head swam for a minute before she could straighten. It was a minute too long. The terrorist tore at her clothes, stripping her and throwing her back to the ground._

_"I should teach you a lesson. Teach Mossad a lesson," the man growled. "Those monkeys send a filthy bitch to do their dirty work for them." He spat on her._

_"You won't get your honey and virgins that way," Ziva retorted, fighting to stay alert. She refused to try and cover herself, knowing it would only give him more power._

_"Oh, you like this?" He sneered. "You finally see reason, see who the real men are, and it's not your swine." He dropped to his knees and forced her legs apart, then took his knife and cut the skin in several places, and Ziva finally started struggling. He backhanded her again, the blow making her woozy. He pinned her to the ground, his fetid body odor overwhelming her and making her gag. She didn't remember what came next, only that after it ended she was aching and torn, her legs sticky with blood and other things she didn't want to think about. She hoped she would bleed out and end this torture, but he had been careful to make only shallow cuts. When he returned, he cut her again, different places. He attacked again and again, each time leaving her bruised and bloody. Each time, a bit more of her died. And then came the day he did not come alone. Four of them crowded into her cell, each with the same goal. She tried to clench her legs together, to cross her ankles and lock them in place, but her muscles trembled and she was no match for them._

Ziva's eyes popped open. Her muscles were tensed, heart hammering in her chest, sweat coating her skin. She listened, but nobody else stirred. She must not have screamed. Her training still held, then. She forced her muscles to relax, working from the extremities inward. Her legs and arms ached, and she could not help but wonder how long she had been trapped in her nightmare. The sheets on her bed were damp and one corner had popped off, leaving her tangled in the soggy cotton. When she could move again, she pushed up to sitting, forcing herself to stay there as dark spots swirled in her vision. She realized she needed at least some fruit juice to replenish her blood sugar levels to avoid the adrenaline crash that already was pushing its way in.

Despite the summer heat outside, she reached for the heavy fleece robe she wore in the winter. As she moved, her soaked sleepclothes stuck to her skin. Ziva gritted her teeth and stood, peeling off the sodden cotton. A spare towel on her dresser allowed her to dry off, and she pulled on new pajamas as she shivered. Once the robe was firmly belted around her waist, hands trembling the entire time, she made her way downstairs by feel.

She blinked at the light from the refrigerator and let her eyes adjust before finding the orange juice on the top shelf. When she closed the door, the rest of the kitchen was too dark, so she flipped on the single low-wattage bulb above the sink, its soft glow giving her just enough light to get down a glass and pour herself some juice.

"Ziva?" Damon's low voice startled her, and she spilled some juice. She cursed in Hebrew, then reached for a paper towel to wipe it up. Only then did she turn to look at him.

"Damon?" She thought she sounded appropriately questioning.

"What aren't you telling me?" he asked.

"I was hot and I thought some juice would cool me down," she said.

"So hot you're wearing a winter bathrobe?" Damon leaned against the doorjamb, his arms at his sides.

Ziva didn't answer. Instead she turned back to the counter and drank her juice.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

"That day at Gibbs house, I thought I was back in Afghanistan." Damon carefully didn't look at Ziva's face. "The guns started going off, I ducked to shield Sean and next thing I knew, I could see the sand and feel the heat." He stayed away from Ziva, but moved into the room, leaning a hip on the kitchen table. "I watched you chase after them and it was like watching the rest of my unit move into action without me."

When Ziva didn't say anything, he looked over. She stood with her back to him, her hands on the counter's edge. If there was more light, he knew her knuckles would be white. "I thought I was rid of those. It's been a long time, since that last time I helped the team out."

"It was a Humvee then," Ziva said, her voice quiet in the darkness of the room.

"I could picture Heatherton driving it, leading us into battle before we got blown up." Damon kept his voice about the same as hers. "I've had a lot of flashbacks over the past few years. Some are like waking memories. Other times it's worse, and I don't remember I'm not here any more. The one last time was a waking one. The one at the Gunny's house was the kind where I think I'm back there until something snaps me out of it."

"That must be difficult," Ziva said.

"It's scary," Damon said. "I see it a lot with the men and women I work with at the Wounded Warriors. A lot of the injuries they deal with are as much mental and emotional as they are physical."

"That is a challenge all of the branches of the military face," Ziva said. She still faced the wall, her shoulders straight under the fuzzy robe.

"It's a tough one," Damon said. "Admitting I needed help was the hardest part for me. It's the hardest part for most of us. We're the strong ones. The tough soldiers, sailors and marines who keep other people safe. We're not the ones who need help. That's what we tell ourselves."

"It is only when we have nothing left to lose that we can face what we have lost," Ziva said.

He watched as she turned to face him.

"I am glad you were able to ask for help," she said. She walked out of the kitchen and Damon managed to resist the temptation to reach out and stop her with a hand to the shoulder.


	11. Chapter 11

_AN: Sorry this is late going up today - I got so excited over my Red Sox winning the World Series that it slipped my mind. *sheepish grin* (Also, I finished a major piece of a work project involving downloading more than 3,000 PDFs individually - I need to upgrade my McGeeking skills - and my novel made it up to No. 14 on Amazon in the LGBT literary fiction category. It's been an exciting 48 hours.) _

_If any of you are NaNo-ing, BTW, I'm jenniecoughlin over there. Good luck with NaNo - 10 hours and counting until kickoff! _

_Anyway..._

_Thanks for all your comments on the last chapter. This one should answer some - but not all - of your questions. _

* * *

Wednesday morning, Sarah looked around the coffee shop, her gaze landing on the door every time it opened. Then she caught herself doing it and head-slapped herself.

"Sarah? Are you okay?" asked Laura, the early-morning cashier.

"I'm fine," she said. "It's-" She cut herself off, not sure how to explain a Gibbs-slap without getting the person worried that her brother worked in an abusive workplace. "It's fine. Just reminding myself about stupid things I need to stop thinking." She turned away and started straightening the supplies next to the espresso machine.

She couldn't believe that she was starting to think about Josh. Even the name still made her wince, thanks to Evil Josh, and here she was thinking things she had no right to think about the cute future law student who just happened to be good friends with Tony. Or something like that. It sounded like there was a story there, but nobody had filled her in. Wasn't there always a story with this crowd? At least this wasn't likely to be another plague incident. Still, she couldn't help but wonder if she was delusional, or if there was really something there. Was he interested, or did he just want to be a friend? The baby booted her kidney and she stared down, frowning at her belly. Right. She was delusional. Like any guy was going to want to step foot into her insanity of a life right now, especially when she looked like a cow.

When the new guy rushed in, half an hour later, Sarah put him on the register and moved Renee over to take her spot. She grabbed a dish bucket and headed out to bus the tables — something that should have been done before half of them were cluttered.

"I've got it Sarah," said Malcolm. "That's too heavy."

"You're working the register," she said. "We'll talk about reporting to work on time later." She gritted her teeth and ignored the ache in her back.

She took the damp cloth and the bucket and cleared the dishes from tables where people had left them, even though there was a dish drop by the trash cans. It would be like this all summer, tourists who didn't know their way around and just left trash everywhere. Not until after the students came back in the fall and learned the ropes — the freshmen at least — would things get better. By then she'd be waddling around like a hippo. She managed not to stick her tongue, but only because people could see her. Instead she made a note to channel all her frustration into writing after work. If she managed to stay awake more than a couple of hours after she got home, that is.

She was so busy collecting dishes, tossing out trash and wiping down tables that she didn't notice until she heard the voice behind her.

"Sarah?"

She jumped a bit — not that she would admit it — and turned to see Josh standing there, laptop bag over his shoulder and a cup of coffee in his head.

"Hi," she said.

"I was running late today, but I wanted to get my coffee to go — and to say hi. You know, now that I know your name."

Sarah groaned. "Oh, great. Ziva's probably figured out that you're the guy I mentioned to her and she'll tell the guys and one of us is going to get read the riot act." She wrinkled her nose. "If they start giving you grief, I apologize. They're a little... overprotective."

"Jimmy gave me the basics," he said. "It sounds like they have a reason to be."

"If you're surviving on Gibbs' team, you're a better man than he is," Sarah said, then felt her face start to turn pink. "So, you know the story?"

He smiled. "I know I'm even more interested in that rain check for next spring," he replied. "Assuming you can forgive me for my first name..."

Sarah laughed. "You're interning on Gibbs' team, so I know your free time doesn't exist, but if you do actually get some, let me know." She pulled out her phone and got his number, then texted him so he'd have hers. "Now I've got to get back to work, and you'd better go or Gibbs will head-slap you."

As he waved and headed out the door, Sarah reminded herself not to mention it to Abby later today when she picked Sarah up for their doctors' appointments or the guys would find out and give Josh holy hell.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Vance stood on the catwalk outside MTAC, his arms resting on the rail as he watched the team, minus Gibbs, in the bullpen.

"Problem, Leon?" Gibbs asked as he walked up.

Through long practice, Vance didn't budge at the voice he hadn't expected. "Just making sure all the agents are in good form, Gibbs." He couldn't hear what Tony and McGee were saying, but the rubber band that DiNozzo shot across the gap between their desks was as normal as McGee's wince when it hit his shoulder. The lack of retaliation surprised him, as did David's lack of participation. Cooper scrambled in from the elevator, checking the time as he dashed to his desk. He didn't see Miss Scuito anywhere, but that wasn't unusual. "Your team's had a rough few weeks." He turned to face Gibbs. "So have you. How's your father?"

"Jack's fine." Gibbs kept his focus on the team. "Now that he can, he's over at the McGees' house most of the day. Eileen says he keeps Sean occupied."

Vance inspected Gibbs, but the team leader seemed fine, no special tension that would indicate an issue Vance should address. Still, he had noticed some signs in the team. "I have you on light duty for the next few days, Gibbs. If anybody's not adjusting back to normal, let me know."

Gibbs just nodded, a single jerk of his chin.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Abby sat on the exam table hating the generic cloth gown and the crinkly white paper under her, its rustle each time she moved making her wish for fingernails on a chalkboard or something else less annoying. She didn't like these appointments, even when they weren't for something major — she never felt quite herself when she was stripped of her usual clothes, her pigtails and makeup incongruous against the soothing decor of the exam room. She had looked for a doctor who wouldn't judge her or her choices and found one, but even though the doctor admitted the office was too boring for her own taste, she said she needed it to keep the patients who were less adventurous than Abby.

As Dr. Malinson walked in, Abby tried not to fidget.

"I've sent your samples off for tests," she said. "Before we get started, you mentioned when you called that you had some concerns."

Abby nodded. "I think — no, I know — that I had a miscarriage a couple of months ago." She explained about the blood tests and everything around the time of the incident, leaving out the whole 'breaking the law, kind of' bit so that she didn't get Gibbs in trouble. "Jimmy and I have been trying for about six months, and we haven't gotten anywhere, so I wanted to make sure there wasn't something wrong with me."

Dr. Malinson nodded as Abby spoke, making notes at several points. When Abby finished, she said, "I sounds pretty normal given your age and history," she said. "But there are some things we can check for, as well as some things we can try to push things along before going full-bore on fertility treatments." She made a few more notes. "Now, let me complete the physical exam."

Abby put up with being poked and prodded and wondered if this was why Ducky and Jimmy preferred working with the dead — it had to feel less invasive than this. She hated exams, especially when she thought they might find something horrible. When the doctor finally invited her to sit back up and get dressed while she went to take care of something, Abby was relieved to slip back into her tiny skirt, T-shirt and clunky boots. She felt like her again.

By the time the doctor came back in, Abby was twisting her fingers, and resting her hands on her knuckles alternately.

"Is everything OK?" she asked.

"We can't tell without a full workup of tests, though I should be able to rule a couple of possibilities out once the lab gets the results back to me for the basics." she said. "I have a couple of things I'd like to try first before running the complete workup." She pulled out a kit. "You're a scientist, so I don't have to explain how this works to you, I don't imagine."

Abby took the box and read the back, then looked inside to see test strips. "It should be easy."

The doctor smiled. "Good. Try this for your next cycle, just to make sure we're not missing the obvious possibility that your ovulation isn't at the 'standard' time. Likewise, we should get your fiance in to test him, make sure that's not the issue." She made a note on her clipboard. "

"So this might work?" Abby asked. "Or are you just trying it because you have to before saying we have to do more?"

"It could easily work," the doctor said. "You're likely at the stage where your ovaries are starting to sputter a bit — some months you won't release any and then the next month you might release two eggs because your FSH levels are working overtime to make sure you push one out. This will confirm if you are ovulating, which will give us clues about our next steps."

"But what about those months where I have too many?" Abby was afraid to ask.

"That's one thing that isn't mentioned much," Malinson said. "Most people assume the reason more older women have multiples is because of treatments that use multiple eggs, but that's only part of the reason. As your FSH levels rise to try and keep your ovaries pushing out eggs, they can overshoot and you'll get multiple eggs released. There is a slightly elevated risk of a multiple pregnancy. The risk is less than that of a miscarriage though — that can be as high as one in three." She paused. "Abby, one miscarriage isn't unusual. But if you have a second or third, you might want to think about the impact on your body and if there are other options that might make sense."

The doctor didn't spell those out, but Abby could fill in the blanks. She just didn't know how she felt about them.

She forced her worries down as she walked into the waiting room to find Sarah sitting there.

"Is everything all right?" she asked Sarah.

Sarah handed her a black and white photo and Abby smiled as she looked at the sonogram. "Baby McGee's healthy?"

"She's doing well," Sarah said.

"She?"

Sarah nodded. "It's a girl."

Abby pulled Sarah to her feet and hugged her. "That is so, so great," she said. "Come on, let's go tell the others!" She'd worry about her own problems later.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Gibbs sat at his desk, pretending he was reading on the computer. Scowling, he reached for his hated reading glasses. Almost blew it, Gunny, he scolded himself. But instead of looking through the lenses, he looked over them, observing. The team was quiet, which was unusual enough for his gut to send off warning flares.

Before he could do anything, Vance walked into the bullpen.

"Can we help you, Director?" DiNozzo asked.

"You can, Agent DiNozzo. All of you can. In fact, everybody in this agency can." Vance stood there and looked around, and Gibbs didn't have to look to know everybody on the floor was looking over to the bullpen.

Gibbs took off his reading glasses and moved his chair back so he could see all of his team, the intern Cooper and Vance without turning.

"I've been reviewing agency data for our annual budget presentation and it's come to my attention that our cold case load has grown slightly each year for the past three." Vance held up a hand to the side, where Jarvis' cold case unit sat. "This is not a complaint about anybody's performance. Team clearance rates have been steady during this time when I look at them compared to the hours involved. But as cyber crime and financial crime have become more common and more sophisticated, cases take longer to resolve and cold cases become more difficult to close because the evidence can't be preserved in the same way." He looked around the room. "SecNav greenlighted a new initiative of mine today — a contest of sorts." He paused until the murmurs died down. "For the next three months, I'm opening up all cold cases besides the ones Jarvis and his team already are working on. Each agent can pull one case at a time to work. Once a case is pulled, that agent gets to work it until it's solved or they admit they can't solve it and return it to the cold case pile. I'll track the cases closed, and at the end of the three months, I'll have some performance awards for those who excel."

"What kind of rewards?" DiNozzo asked.

"Additional time off, a pay bonus and some possible merit awards, depending on how many cases are cleared and how they're distributed," Vance said. "Full details on how this will work will be in your email by the end of the day." He turned to leave, then stopped and turned back. "Also, this is designed for individual agents, not teams. If you need to bring your team on the case, let me and your team leader know."

This time, nothing stopped Vance from leaving. Gibbs let the corner of his lips quirk up at the buzz in the room as agents talked about the contest once Vance left.

"The director's up to something," DiNozzo said. "Right?"

"He is trying to close open cases," David replied.

"But a contest?" McGee looked over at the other two agents. "Tony's right. Something's behind this."

"It's still a good idea, though, right?" Cooper wheeled his chair out from around the partition between him and McGee.

"Oh, it's a good idea," DiNozzo said. "I just wish-" He broke off two women coming off the elevator approached. "Sarah? Why are you and Abby here?"

"I work here, Tony," Abby said, punching him in the shoulder.

"Ouch!" Tony rubbed his upper arm. "Yeah, but you were off today, weren't-" He stopped. "Sarah, what are you holding?"

Gibbs recognized the black-and-white images as Sarah handed them to DiNozzo and McGee.

"Sarah?" McGee looked up from the photo in his hand. "Why didn't you ask one of us to go with you?"

She rolled her eyes. "It's fine, Tim. I didn't know what to expect this time, so I didn't say anything. If I'd known, I would have said something."

"Everything all right?" Gibbs asked.

Sarah nodded. "She's healthy, and due about two weeks before Christmas."

"You guys are getting a baby for Christmas — isn't that great!" Abby bounced in her ridiculous boots. Gibbs checked her face, but she seemed genuinely happy for Sarah and the guys.

"Wait, she?" Tony came out of his chair and around to where Sarah and Abby stood. "It's a girl?"

"They showed me on the sonogram, but she still just looks like a blob to me," Sarah said. "But yes, they said she's clearly a girl." She took a step back. "You guys aren't going to go nuts getting her all pink things, are you?"

Gibbs swallowed at the look of horror on Sarah's face and remembered a similar look on Shannon's face when they found out Kelly was going to be a girl.

_"Pink does not look good with red hair, Jethro," she said as they walked through the department store and he stopped to check the price of a pink dress with yellow flowers. "No pink until we find out whose hair she got."_

_He agreed and they moved on, but he couldn't help picturing their baby in it. He came back later and got the dress, stashing it in his footlocker where Shannon wouldn't see it. When Kelly came out with brown hair — barely a hint of red — he pulled it out and gave it to Shannon._

_When they scraped together enough for some professional photos of Kelly to send to her grandparents, she wore that dress, a matching pink clip pulling her wisps of hair into a Pebbles Flintstone tuft on top of her head._

"No pink," McGee said. "But good luck getting Mom or anybody else not to buy her pink." He paused. "Except Abby." He raised an eyebrow. "No skulls, Aunt Abby," he said.

"You guys take all the fun out of it," Abby said. "Come on, Sarah, let's go tell Ducky and Jimmy before Vance wonders what trouble we're causing." She pulled Sarah with her toward the back elevator.

As DiNozzo and McGee studied the photographs, Gibbs started planning decorative touches on the bedroom set he was making for his honorary granddaughter. Nothing that would be out of place if she had a little brother later, but the type of things he would have put on Kelly's if he'd had the time and the skill when she was born.

Only later that evening when he was marking the changes on the wood in his basement did he realize Cooper and Ziva hadn't joined in the conversation.


	12. Chapter 12

As she drove home that afternoon, Ziva wondered what Director Vance was planning. He had something in mind; she was certain of it. The director and Eli had known each other for too long — she could read the signs of a plot. At least Vance didn't bend — stoop? — to Eli's level of conniving.

Eli was a master of finding the exploiting vulnerabilities, in everybody. Only once had she seen somebody best him, when Tony baited into Eli revealing that Rivken was playing her. Vance did not do that, not unless he had to.

Ziva automatically turned on her directional before realizing that she had allowed herself to fall into a routine, something she could not afford. Paloma might be dead, but the team always had enemies. Ziva herself had enemies, and she was not sure if Eli considered himself one of them. Habit was dangerous. It could get her killed. She turned off her blinker, then reached back and Gibbs-slapped herself. She went straight through the intersection, then cut into the left lane, ignoring the honking cars. She skipped the first turn, took the second one. Three blocks down, she turned right, following her original path in parallel. As she figured out how to get to the house, part of Ziva's brain evaluated the rest of her life for vulnerabilities. She had a mental list of changes she needed to make and routines that needed to be shaken up some when she realized the biggest hole, one that anybody familiar with her file would spot.

It was just basics, the same things she had done when she was Ari's handler. She had seen the information on Gibbs and on Shannon and Kelly and was able to see how things played out from there, how he had taken the path that he did. She likewise, could determine many things from the gaps in Tony's files, though she had not been able to determine the particulars. She could make some educated guesses as to what else she should search for to round out his file. And if anybody looked at her file, they would notice a similar hole. They would see her recent past and determine that several things were likely to have occurred, and they would look at her subsequent behavior to see if their conclusions were accurate and if they revealed a vulnerability that could be exploited.

Ziva shivered, despite the summer humidity. She could not afford for anybody to realize that there could be pressure put on that spot. If they believed it to no longer be an issue, that certainly would accomplish her goal. Trauma was intensified by memory, or memory by trauma. She remembered telling Damon that earlier this year when he had helped them on the hijacking that was also a murder. And she had spoken from experience, even if she chose not to reveal that. The trauma in her past was such that the memories were strong indeed. There came a point where the trauma's grip on her memories would weaken, or so she had to believe. The challenge was for her to get to that point, and sooner rather than later. Before they became embroiled in another case that targeted them all, as happened too often for anybody to like.

She thought about what she could do, and what it would take to get past this point. Ziva remembered her words to Abby many weeks ago and realized what she would need to do. It would not be a hardship, and she wanted to do it. Really, it was something that would have happened by now had she not been vulnerable. She just needed to stop allowing her weaknesses to rule her life. But first, she would start with a bigger challenge tonight — the Muay Thai competition team at her workout facility had been asking her to join them and she thought sparring would help her on this new path.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

McGenius had a late meeting with Vance, and Ziva had told Abby she had martial arts that night when Abby tried to drag her to yoga class. Tony didn't know Damon's schedule, but McSis should be around. Tony decided to go to Silver Spring to see Jethro. At least that was his story if anybody asked.

The piano, too, but mostly the furball that Tony had gotten used to curling up with and talking to when he needed to say stuff out loud before he could talk to Tim about it.

Tony pulled into the driveway, not sure what to expect since there were no cars there. He figured that meant Damon was at work, but wondered how Sarah had gotten home. He walked up to the side door and was about to walk in when he remembered it wasn't his house any more. He knocked and wasn't surprised to see Sarah open the door a few minutes later. "You headed out pretty quick today," he said. "How are you doing?"

"Tired," Sarah said, and stifled a yawn. "Sleeping isn't exactly easy anymore."

Tony looked at her. "She's shaping up to be as tall as her grandmother."

"Yeah, rub it in, Tony," Sarah said. "She's going to have Tim's feet, I just know it. McGees have long feet."

"Don't I know it," Tony said, but remembered in time not to leer. "So, how do you feel about it being a girl, other than not wanting any pink?"

Sarah shrugged. "It doesn't matter how I feel — she's yours, remember?" She turned and headed for the living room, but Tony had seen something on her face that made him press the issue.

"It matters to us," he said as he watched her settle awkwardly into a chair. "You're the one having the baby, not us."

"Like I could forget that." She winced and started rubbing circles on one side of her belly.

"Is everything okay?" Tony asked.

"The baby's just active today. You'd think there were McGee football player genes in the mix," she said. "It's just been a long week."

"Everything all right?" he asked.

She nodded and closed her eyes, letting her head rest back on the chair. "I'm just ready to get back to not being pregnant," she said. "And yes, I know I still have four more months. 123 days, to be exact, assuming this kid's on time."

Tony studied the shadows under her eyes, the smudges almost as dark as her hair. "Did something happen?" He wasn't sure what she was trying to hide, but his spidey senses definitely were tingling.

"Nothing happens," Sarah said. "I get up, go to work, come home, and go to bed because this baby's eaten my brain. And then I wake up every two hours to pee or move around to try and find a less uncomfortable way of sleeping." She growled. "I haven't written anything decent for weeks, my feet feel like if they get any bigger my shoes will explode, and I just want my life to be normal again."

Tony spoke before he could even think about it. "Sarah, you don't have to do this. You really don't. If you want to, we definitely want to adopt the baby, but if this is too much, you do not have to do this. You and Ziva can take back your apartment so you can get back to normal, and Tim and I will go with our original plan."

Sarah just stared at him.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Sarah hadn't realized how good it would feel to say something out loud. She'd been avoiding that because she didn't think it was right of her to even think that. Still she knew that Tony couldn't possibly be as okay with the idea as he'd said. She knew her brother and brother-in-law well enough to know that they really were looking forward to being dads. She said as much.

"Sure, we want to have kids," Tony said, leaning forward, his elbows resting on the knees of his jeans. "But not at your expense. We said we'd take the baby because you suggested it, but we're perfectly fine with going another route — that's what we thought we were going to have to do."

"But what would I tell people?" Sarah said.

"It's your business and our business, not anybody else's," Tony said. "You should talk to your doctor, because neither of us is one, even if McGeek has the brains to be one. But this is your decision, Sarah. It's always been your decision."

She nodded, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to spill out. When she couldn't, she swiped at her eyes, brushing them away. "But, what about Mom and Dad?"

"Sarah, it's your decision," Tony said. "Your parents are about the best parents out there, and they'll support whatever you decide."

She nodded, but couldn't speak. She tried to think about what it would be like, but she was having trouble. "What about-" Her voice broke.

"What about...?" Tony prompted her.

"Josh."

"Cooper?" He frowned.

She shook her head. "No, Evil Josh." She looked down at the floor, even though she had to look way past her stupid belly. "He's back in town — the semester starts in a few weeks — and when he sees me, he's going to wonder."

Tony sighed. "Can't that guy just leave you alone?" He sighed again. "No, he can't, because that would make everybody's life entirely too easy." He rolled his eyes. "Look, Sarah, Josh is out of your life."

"But what if he wants to use the baby to get back in." She bit her lip and thought about what Josh — nice Josh — had found for her after she'd mentioned this in one of their conversations. "He is the baby's father, and I'd have to notify him before giving up the baby. And what if he tries to make a fuss, to keep you and Tim from getting the baby, or just to put me through hell?"

Tony looked at her. "Are you saying you'd rather have an abortion than risk that?" he asked.

Sarah sat up, wincing as her back twinged. "You said it was my decision," she said.

"Yeah, your decision. Not his." Tony scowled. "Sarah, if you feel like this is too much, that you can't handle it, we'll back you all the way, whatever you decide to do. But if this is just because you're worried that Josh is going to try and screw you-"

"Again," Sarah muttered.

"...then we'll find a way around that," Tony said. "He does not get to dictate any more of your life."

She nodded. "If you say so."

"We can solve it pretty easily," Tony said. "You're our surrogate. That's what we tell people. Put me down as the father, since you can't put Tim down. Nobody can prove otherwise."

Sarah looked at him. "Are you sure? I mean, isn't that lying?"

Tony shrugged. "If there's one thing I've learned from Gibbs over the years, sometimes the ends are more important than the means." He reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. "It's the unwritten rule: You do what you have to for family. And you're family."

Sarah blinked back tears. "Stupid hormones," she muttered, swiping at her eyes. "Yeah, okay. We'll do that." She bit her lower lip and looked over at Tony. "Thank you."

"We're the ones who should be thanking you," Tony said. He waggled his eyebrows. "We at least promise no pink."

Sarah doubled over giggling until she was gasping for breath.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

As the shadow of Paloma Reynosa and Pedro Hernandez faded into the background, Ducky took to observation. The team had been through a great deal of stress and he did not want them to suffer unduly from its aftereffects, especially with so many changes coming in the immediate and not-so-immediate future. He watched his young assistant as he became more confident in his relationship with Abigail, and it pleased him to see how the couple became closer as the days went on. He rather had feared that the closeness which protective custody forced upon them would leave raw spots that could become abscessed if care was not taken, but that didn't seem to be the case. They both were quite close, and there seemed to be no friction from the situation. Abigail continued to drink her No-Caf-Pow, but as yet he had not seen any other evidence of developments on that front.

He was quite sure the same could not be said for Anthony and Timothy, who were no doubt easily able to see the progress toward their impending parenthood each time they saw Sarah. She was a particular concern of his, as she had not chosen any of her situation, from the cartel threats to her predicament. He spoke often to Ziva, and he had taken to stopping by the coffee shop in the mornings before work when he had time. Their tea was abysmal — not brewed properly at all — but their pastries were quite acceptable. Not so nice as one would find in Paris, of course, but their scones did compare favorably with the ones Mother had made in her younger days. It was a nice treat one or two days a week, and seeing Sarah put his mind at ease about her. She was as polite as her elder brother, at least when not under stress, and he knew he amused her.

He asked Ziva about her from time to time, but she did not seem to have much to say. He thought perhaps it was because this was so outside her frame of reference. While Ziva was many things, she had never shown much interest in being a family person, and he had known from almost the beginning that she was unlikely to ever give him honorary great-grandchildren. Of all of them, she had always been the least likely. He rather had thought that he might start hearing more about Damon, but that did not seem to be the case, either. He considered whether he should pull her aside and make sure she was comfortable in her role in Sarah's life. He could imagine all too well how many questions Sarah must have. He had offered to answer any that she had, of course, but an elderly medical examiner was hardly the most likely confidant for a young woman with child, even if he was part of the family. He rather thought Ziva would not be comfortable in that role either, and Damon certainly was not likely to be either Sarah's first choice or a source of information. He wondered if she had talked to Abigail, but thought perhaps he should talk to Mr. Palmer first. With their recent experiences, she might not be the best person for Sarah to lean on anyway. He frowned as he finished brewing a pot of Earl Grey. There were sometimes far too many complicating factors with his young friends, ones he wished he could do something about.


	13. Chapter 13

_Yes, the previous chapter was on the heavy side, with lots to ponder. That's partly why I'm slowing down the pace of posting just a bit, because the story's getting to the point where it's a lot to digest if you read straight through._

Also, I'm in NaNo madness. I'm jenniecoughlin there if you're participating and looking for writing buddies. If you just want excerpts and updates, I'm posting those on my FB page: .com (slash) JennieCoughlinExeter .

More to come Tuesday. Rotten tomatoes can be left in comments. ;) Seriously, though, thank you to everybody who's taken the time to read and review - the reviews absolutely make my day. 

* * *

_Thursday, August 12, 2010_

Damon had gotten caught up in his work at Bethesda with a new batch of sailors who had been shipped home from Ramstein the day after game night, and it wasn't until after six that he left the hospital and headed home.

When he got there, Sarah was asleep on the couch, her fingers dangling just above Jethro's head. He could hear Ziva in the kitchen and dropped his bag in his room, toeing off his shoes and socks. He padded toward the kitchen and watched as Ziva focused on measuring out ingredients. She added oil to a measuring spoon in small dribbles until it was level, then added it to a Ziploc bag. She did the same with pepper and other spices, and Damon kept quiet so as not to disturb her. Once everything was in the bag, she placed chopped vegetables in there and closed it before shaking. She paused several times to check the vegetables before she was satisfied, then removed them with tongs and placed each one on the cookie sheet lying on the counter. Once the sheet was in the oven, Ziva straightened.

"Do you want me to throw some chicken on the grill to go with that?" Damon asked.

She turned to face him. "Yes, that would be most helpful." She pointed to the container on the counter in front of the toaster. "I put it in to marinate this morning, and I turned the grill on-" She paused to check her slim watch. "-seventeen minutes ago, so it should be ready."

Damon took the chicken outside and placed it on the grill, enjoying the sizzle as it landed on the hot metal. He closed the lid and turned to head inside, only to find Ziva standing there holding two glasses of white wine.

He took the offered one and sipped, finding the taste refreshing on the warm day. "You don't usually drink wine," he said.

"I have chosen not to drink around Sarah, as she cannot," Ziva said. "But she is asleep, and this dish would be perfect with a glass of wine, so I thought we could enjoy it while it cooks."

Damon pulled out two of the chairs propped up against the rail to keep the seats pollen-free. "In that case, let's sit and enjoy it." He gestured toward one.

"Toda," Ziva said as she sat. Damon wondered how he'd come to know the Hebrew words without even noticing.

"Damon, I do not know if this is the right time," Ziva said after a few sips. "But I wondered if we perhaps could go out for dinner Friday, just the two of us. If I do not have a case, of course."

He almost choked on his sip of wine, but recovered. "Sure," he said. "I'd like that." He paused and looked over Ziva. "You're sure about this?"

She nodded. "It is the right time," she replied. "But I understand why you ask."

Before he could reply, she looked at her watch again. "The vegetables will be ready," she said, rising smoothly to her feet. "Shall we eat inside? I believe Sarah would be more comfortable out of the heat."

Damon nodded. As she walked inside, he finished his wine, mindful of Ziva's reason for not drinking more often. He made a note to ask Brad to recommend a place for dinner with decent wine so Ziva could enjoy more than just a stolen glass while Sarah slept.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Though she didn't have to work on Thursdays and Fridays, Sarah had taken to going to the coffee shop early in the mornings to work anyway, even though it meant taking the Metro. She wasn't getting a lot of work done on her novel, but at this point, she would take anything. With Tony and Tim covering her medical bills and by splitting rent with Ziva and Damon, she could support herself on what she made working, even if money was tight. She reminded herself that at least she was getting plenty of life experience for her future books.

She didn't let herself think about just why she made a point of getting to the coffee shop so early on those days. But when Josh walked in at his usual time, Sarah made sure her notebooks and laptop were moved to one side by the time he sat down across from her. That thirty minutes where she was just Sarah, hanging out with a new friend, was quickly becoming the highlight of her week. With no pressure for anything but friendship, they would just talk, different topics each time.

"So you've heard how I ended up here," Sarah said that morning. "Why did you want to intern at NCIS if you want to work in intelligence? Why not apply at the State Department or something like that?"

Josh wrapped his hands around his coffee mug. He started at his mug for so long Sarah thought he wasn't going to answer.

"After my dad was killed, I was all set to enlist," he said. "I was set to head to Princeton that weekend, but I told my mom I wasn't going. I was going to join up, head overseas to go after the men who killed my father." He looked up. "I would have done it, too. I didn't want to listen to my mom, even when she said that it wasn't what my dad wanted."

"He didn't want you to serve?" she asked. "Really?" She tried to picture her dad not wanting them to serve. He'd never demanded that they serve — not that he ever demanded anything from them — but she knew he would have been happy if either one of them had gone into the military.

"He wanted me to serve," Josh said. "But he thought I would be a better officer than a grunt, and he wanted me to get my law degree." He shrugged. "It seemed like a plan to me at the time. I was 18. What did I know?"

"Like you're so old now," Sarah said.

"I'm not the kid I was then," Josh said. "That day, it changed everything." He looked down again. "I was there, you know. When the bomb went off." He rubbed a spot on his forehead where Sarah could see a light scar, noticeable only if you were looking. "I got hit by some of the shrapnel."

"But you weren't badly hurt?"

Josh shook his head. "I was able to go to NCIS to talk to the agents who were investigating." He smiled. "I was pissed off. I was so mad that somebody had done this, that my dad had survived a bunch of deployments only to get killed at the Army-Navy Club. He was set to deploy again, and I hadn't wanted him too. I wanted him to stay here."

"Where he'd be safe." Sarah nodded. "I was too little to remember most of my dad's deployments — I was born just a few years before he started at the Academy. But Tim said he had the same reaction when he was a kid for a while, every time that Dad deployed."

"I always forget that you're a Navy brat," Josh said. "So you know."

Sarah nodded. "I know."

"I didn't think it was fair, that my father had died." He clenched his hand in a fist. "And then Tony came in, serious, and he said something and I got really pissed at him. So he went through all these lines, you know the cliches, like he knew they were cliches, and he let me be mad at him. And then he did his job."

"I think that is his job," Sarah said. "You can see it when the team's all together and Gibbs is getting into what Tim calls his "second B is for Bastard" mode and Tony does something to give Gibbs a reason to headslap him. It defuses everything."

Josh nodded. "That's what he did." He paused. "And then he checked in with me. Talked me into waiting and going back to school. I don't think he thought he made a difference, but he did." Josh looked at her, and Sarah reached over to put a hand on his shoulder.

"Sounds like you made the right choice," she said.

Josh nodded. "It's all because of Tony, and I always wanted to do something to thank him. So when internships were something I started looking at, NCIS came to mind."

"I'm glad you did," Sarah said, then looked away, biting her lip. _Not until spring,_ she reminded herself.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Abby paced around her lab while Major Mass Spec whirred away doing his usual fantastic work. Ziva stood by the plasma screen looking at the displays of evidence.

"It's just not right," Abby said. "I mean, yes, it might be right because who am I to say it's wrong because everything happens for a reason even if I don't know what it is. But it doesn't feel like it should be right and if it's all wrong and I have to tell Jimmy that's going to be bad and I don't want to do that and I don't want to have to tell Gibbs because he's already missed out on this chance once because of Pedro Hernandez and I don't want him to miss out again, even if Sarah is giving the guys a little McBaby."

"Abby, you are using Tony's nicknames," Ziva said. "Also, you are not making sense. What does this have to do with Lt. Jorgenson's death?"

"Oh, it doesn't have anything to do with him," Abby said, looking up. "That's all still waiting for Major Mass Spec's ruling on the stuff Ducky found under his fingernails. I think it's a type of putty, but I'm still waiting for the analysis so that I can be sure. I've got a database of all the different putties that are commercially available, and all the ones the federal government uses, especially the Navy and Marines. So once I have a sample profile to compare to the database, I should be able to figure out where the putty came from, or at least how to figure that out and then you guys can find your primary crime scene. But the Major's going to be busy for at least another 15 minutes."

"Then why did you call me down here?" Ziva turned to look at her, arms crossed.

"Because, Ziva. I need to talk to somebody and I don't want to hear Ducky's stories about this and I don't want to rub it in to the guys that they won't ever have this kind of issue and Gibbs is totally not who I want to talk about this kind of stuff with, so I'm talking to you."

"What kind of things are you talking about?" Ziva asked. "Abby, I do not understand."

Abby forced herself to take a deep breath and stop pacing. "I went to the doctor yesterday — Sarah and I both had appointments," she said. "She... She told me all this stuff and she said it was mostly stuff I didn't need to worry about yet, not until they see what happens and maybe do some more tests, but now that I know it I can't unknow it and it keeps waking me up and making me think about what I did and what I might have done wrong. Well, not wrong, because I think I needed to do this stuff to get with Jimmy and have us both be right for each other, but not right. Definitely not right."

"Abby."

Ziva's tone stopped her.

"Right, I'm rambling." She forced herself to take a deep breath. "Jimmy and I, we've been talking about bat-gremlins, the way Tony puts it, but now it looks like I might have waited too late and I can't have kids, or maybe I never could because there's something wrong with me and I didn't try to find out earlier when they could have fixed it so now there's not really anything they can do, not unless I had a lot more money than Jimmy and I have and I know it shouldn't mean anything because we can always adopt — that's what Tony and McGee are doing — but that doesn't mean I don't still want to have kids with Jimmy and I don't like to think that there's something wrong with me even though I know that's not really what it means, that this is something a lot of women deal with, but they're not me and I just want everything to work out because it's supposed to work out, just like you guys are supposed to keep the bad guys in jail and out of the streets and protect truth, justice, and the American Way." She stopped when Ziva didn't say anything, then remembered that Ziva wasn't Tony and she wasn't likely to know the Superman reference. "Anyway-" She took a breath to keep going, but Ziva cut her off.

"Abby, I do not have time for this. Call me when you get a-" The beeping interrupted her and Abby spun around and checked the screen to find not only Major Mass Spec's reading, but the match from the database. "The putty is a Navy formula, used on subs," she said. "And most of the subs are based at Norfolk, not Anacostia, so if you can find out which ones were in Anacostia when the lieutenant was killed-"

"We will have our killer. Thank you, Abby," Ziva hurried out of the lab.

Only after she left did Abby call Gibbs to tell him, too.


	14. Chapter 14

_AN: So for those who were reading chapter-by-chapter, this is the real Chapter 14, which I somehow missed uploading. *Gibbs-slaps self* Hopefully this makes more sense. _

* * *

"DiNozzo, with me." Gibbs headed for the elevator. "Ziva, McGee-"

"Go to Anacostia, find the sub," Ziva said.

"Locate the primary crime scene and collect any evidence that wasn't removed," McGee added, reaching into his desk drawer for his Dramamine. He dry-swallowed the pills on the elevator when he realized that Ziva wasn't about to give up the car keys.

"Why a sub?" he wondered as he clung to seat while Ziva navigated the city streets like she was dodging IEDs in Tel Aviv.

"Moveable, soundproof, and unoccupied while in dock," Ziva said, steering the car through spaces McGee was sure were too small.

"OK, so I understand that cuts down on witnesses," McGee said. "But it's a lot harder to get a body off a sub unless you're using the torpedo tubes to dump it in the ocean." He remembered his first case with the team. "We know they didn't do that because we have the body."

"Did not have time to think," Ziva said, whipping around a corner as the light changed from yellow to red. "The killer acted."

As she got checked through the access gate onto the base, McGee tried fitting the data together.

"That means it has to be somebody who would have been aboard the sub," McGee said, the puzzle keeping his mind off his queasy stomach. "And the lieutenant wasn't a dolphin, so he must have been lured there by his attacker."

"That does not fit." Ziva said. She halted the car, throwing them both forward a bit and making McGee's stomach lurch.

"No, it doesn't." McGee got out of the car and resolved to get the keys from Ziva before they headed back to the Navy Yard. "Why lure somebody to an enclosed, soundproof space with almost nobody around and limited access in and out to kill them unless you also plan to leave the body there?"

Ziva pivoted and pointed toward the docks. "The submarine would be there, yes?" The chunky heels on her boots clicked sharply as she strode that way, McGee hurrying after her.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Tony used the app McMapper had put on his phone to see where on base the other two team members were, and followed the dots on the map until he knew what part of the base to head to.

"This way, Boss," he said, pointing toward the storage units near the docks. "They must have figured out where Jorgensen was stashed until we found her."

Gibbs nodded, and they picked up the pace. Tony was eager to see if the rest of the team had found something that might break this case open. He was hoping to get a decent night's sleep again tonight and finally stop feeling like death warmed over.

As they approached, a sailor in his service khakis stepped out of a shed two units over from where he could see the back of Ziva's head. Tim must be inside the small warehouse while she looked on.

Before they got close enough to hail Ziva, the sailor changed direction, walking up behind her, then putting his arm around her head. Tony broke into a run, shouting, and Gibbs was right with him. But there was no need to worry. Ziva did something and the sailor's head jerked, then they fell to the ground and she stepped into the open area and put the heel of her boots down on his hand, pinning it to the ground and sending the knife he'd pulled from someplace skittering across the gravel.

"Knife," Tony yelled, and Tim darted out from his spot behind Ziva to grab it and get it out of the sailor's reach. Ziva flipped the man over on his belly as McGee pulled his gun on the sailor, keeping it aimed as his head and Ziva cuffed him, pulled his arms back so that even Tony winced. When she dragged him to his feet, he stumbled and blood was smeared across the khaki uniform. His face was scraped all along one side where he'd hit the ground.

"It is under control," Ziva said, but she kept her hands on the cuffs pulling the sailor's hands behind his back.

Tony wasn't surprised to recognize one of the faces the master chief had flagged as questionable when they'd talked to him a few minutes ago. "Three witnesses to attempted murder of a federal agent," he said. "Guess this means we don't get to watch the Boss break him in interrogation. I had the popcorn all ready, too."

"You always have popcorn ready," McGee said as he holstered his SIG. "Ziva, are you all right?"

She nodded, once, sharply. "I heard him," she said. "It was easier to let him start so I could throw him off balance than to confront him and risk a cliff."

"A bluff, Ziva," Tony said. She hadn't made that mistake since her first year on the team, he didn't think. "McQueasy, ride back with Gibbs, and I'll go with Ziva to lockup."

"We are fine, Tony," Ziva said. "You can take McGee, and Gibbs and I will book Ensign-" She glanced at his nametag. "Ensign Wardron."

Gibbs didn't disagree, so Tony held out his hand for the keys. Once they were off base, he looked over at Tim.

"Did Ziva seem off to you?" Tony asked.

"She's ticked off about something, but I didn't want to ask in case it was Sarah," Tim replied. "Maybe Abby knows."

Tony made a mental note to visit his favorite Goth, but then Vance had another case waiting for them when they arrived at the Navy Yard and there was no time. He resolved to keep an eye on Ziva, but she seemed more normal as they started digging into the new case, a multi-million dollar embezzlement scheme that SECNAV needed solved before Congressional hearings started next week on the budget. Tony was so busy explaining financial transaction traces to Josh for that he forgot about what he'd seen, at least until they went to arrest the embezzling chief petty officer the next day and he took off into the warehouse. Ziva went one way, Tony cut back to block him off. The sound of crates crashing to the ground had him putting on a burst of speed, but by the time he got there, Ziva had the man on the ground and one knee between his shoulder blades. She aimed her SIG at him with one hand while the other arm was wrapped around her ribs.

Tony held his gun on the sailor. "I've got him," he said, pulling out his cuffs. He tossed them over to Ziva, who holstered her gun and cuffed the sailor, hauling him to his feet with one bloody hand.

"How bad did he get you?" Tony asked, once he had a hand on the chief petty officer's arm.

"It is nothing." Ziva shook her hand, and Tony pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and handed it over. She nodded and wrapped it around her knuckles, hissing as she moved.

"Broken?" Tony asked, marching the guilty sailor to the car.

"No, I do not believe so," Ziva said as she followed. "Bruised, perhaps cracked." Before he could say anything, she added, "I will see Ducky when we return to the Navy Yard," she said. "Unlike you, I know when I am not fine."

Tony smiled — if Ziva was in good enough shape to snipe at him, she couldn't be seriously injured.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Sarah woke up, and the darkness of the room made her grumble. "Whatever happened to sleeping?" She glared down at her rounded belly. Sarah tried to get back to sleep, but now that she was awake, she could feel the pressure on her bladder. The red numbers on her clock showed it was 2 a.m., and she shifted a bit to see if she could find a comfortable position. When that just made her need to pee more, she gave into the inevitable and sat up, muttering as she did. Sarah stumbled out of her room and down the hall to the bathroom. She pushed the door open, squinting in the bright light.

"Sarah!" Ziva's harsh whisper cut the air.

Sarah jerked fully awake at the sight of Ziva's hands raised in a fighting stance. "Whoa!" She wrapped her arms around herself and stepped back.

"I am sorry," Ziva said, lowering her hands. "I just... I was not expecting you." She stood there in just a bra and panties, white bandages stark against her ribs.

"Ziva?" Sarah stepped forward. "Are you OK?" She saw the first aid kit on the counter, and a pile of dark, stained clothes on the floor. The sink had pinkish water in the basin. "What happened?" She looked Ziva over for injuries, and gasped at the crisscrossed scars on her thighs, the skin raised and shiny.

"It is nothing," Ziva said. "A suspect resisted arrest, and Tony and I had to subdue him." She smirked. "Gibbs is interrogating him now, and Tony and McGee are betting on the result." Ziva reached for a disinfecting wipe and rubbed it across the knuckles of one hand, hissing at the sting on torn flesh. "We did not all need to be there, so I figured I would come home so at least one of us would be awake tomorrow." She turned to toss the wipe in the trash can and Sarah saw the scars continued around her legs to the back. Sarah had seen the scars on Ziva's back before, but she had never realized they went all the way down to just a few inches above her knees. She looked up before Ziva turned back, but as she stared at the mirror, she realized Ziva had seen her expression in the mirror's reflection.

"They do not hurt," Ziva said, then turned to face her. "It was a long time ago." She reached for the antibiotic ointment. "Could you help me with this?"

Sarah nodded, glad to have something to do, and smeared the greasy substance on Ziva's knuckles before wrapping them in gauze and taping it down.

"Thank you," Ziva said.

Sarah nodded, then remembered the reason she'd woken in the first place. "Ziva, I really, really need to pee."

Ziva grabbed the nightshirt from the sink counter and pulled it over her head, wincing a bit. "I understand." She stepped into the hall and shut the door.


	15. Chapter 15

_**AN:** I'm an idiot. I uploaded Chapter 15 instead of 14 last time, so everything Damon was talking about with Brad? You missed it. So, if you've been reading chapter by chapter, you've already read this one — please go back one chapter, read the part I left out, then you can re-read this if you want, or just throw rotten tomatoes in comments. I'd like to claim it was Election Day madness, but we didn't realize Election Day would be insane until after the polls closed. (I can blame Election Day and its resulting havoc on my sleep schedule for my lack of writing the past two days, but that's all NaNoWriMo, not this. This is written.) _

* * *

_Monday, August 16, 2010_

On Monday, Damon lifted his hand in a brief wave as he saw Brad enter the rehab room, set up in what looked like an old gym.

"You look at home here," Brad said as he got close enough,.

"Broke Tony's nose here," Damon said, tipping his head toward the other side of the room. "Back when I was one of the people I'm helping now." He stepped away from where the rest of the people were. "Is something wrong, or are you just stopping by?"

"Just came down to see one of the therapists," he said, a grin stealing across his face. "Maribel." He looked across the room, and Damon followed his line of sight to a lovely woman with long dark hair braided and wrapped around her head.

"Nice," he said. "Something going on, or are you just hopeful?"

Brad didn't say. "Just wanted to stop by," he parried. "I didn't realize you were in here helping out."

Damon nodded. "Since a lot of the troops going through rehab are here, and many of them can benefit from Wounded Warriors, this is where I am a couple of days a week helping them get connected with the resources they need. That's what they hired me for."

Brad nodded. "So, how's everybody holding up?"

"They caught the cartel," Damon said. "Or did Tony tell you that?"

Brad shook his head. "Tony's down to visits every other month unless something happens," he said. "I see Sean more often, but I don't ask him about things like that because I don't always know what the guys have mentioned to them and what they haven't. I know they didn't find out about the plague until last year, and there's probably a lot of things they don't tell Sean and Eileen, just to keep them from worrying."

Damon nodded. "I can see that," he said. "Ziva doesn't tell us everything, I can tell that. She comes home a lot with scrapes or other injuries, and unless we see her before she takes care of them, she never mentions them." He remembered the incident last week. "Jethro cannonballed into her Saturday morning, and it was only because she turned white at the impact that we found out she'd cracked a rib taking down a suspect." He frowned. "I wish she'd tell us, but I think she doesn't want to worry Sarah and she doesn't want to tell me and not Sarah."

"How's Sarah doing?" Brad asked. "Sean and Eileen haven't said much to me, and I know they worry about her."

"Everybody worries about her," Damon said. "I keep waiting for her to smack one of them for driving her nuts — she's got a much worse temper than McGee. You'd never guess they were related. And she's not happy."

"She hadn't been, not from the beginning," Brad said.

"You don't need to tell me that." He thought about the things he'd seen. "I think she might be having second thoughts," he said. "Nothing definitive, just some things I've seen. Should I talk to her? Or should I ask somebody else to?"

"Don't tell the guys," Brad said. "They would listen, but I think that's just too awkward since they're planning to adopt the baby." He thought for a second. "Abby? Or Ziva?"

Damon shook his head. "Abby's so wrapped up in what's going on with her and Jimmy, I don't want to open that can of worms," he said. "I could ask Ziva. She's the one who talked to Sarah to start with, I think."

"And you don't have any other reason for asking Ziva?" Brad smirked as he asked. "How'd your date go?"

"A day late, and stiffly," Damon said. "She was on meds for the cracked ribs, so wine was out, as was much of anything besides dinner."

"Ouch." Brad winced. "Although I suppose better Ziva than Tony — his lungs can only take so much trauma."

"Ziva said the same thing," Damon replied. "I suppose I'd better get used to it." That reminded him of the other thing he'd meant to mention to Brad. "So just how protective are Tony and Tim going to get with Sarah? Any ideas?"

Brad rolled his eyes. "As protective as she'll let them get, I'd guess. Why?"

"You know the new intern, Cooper? Or Nice Josh, as Sarah's calling him." At Brad's expression he nodded. "Yeah. They're hanging out, and from the couple of things I've heard her say, it sounds like there's some dating potential."

"Stay out of it," Brad said. "Sarah's an adult, Josh is an adult, and you aren't related to either one. Besides, from what I gather, Nice Josh looks up to Tony — he's not likely to do anything to damage that."

"And Sarah would unleash the hounds of hell on me if I said something to them about the whole thing." Damon had learned that early on. "I'll stay out of it, but I'm counting on you to hold Tony back if he finds out and decides to get revenge for the time I broke his nose."

"Deal." Brad slapped Damon on the shoulder. "Now, I'd better get back to my actual work."

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Abby stomped her foot as she looked at the readings from her test results.

"What's ya got, Abbs?"

She whirled around. "Gibbs, I'm going to put a bell on you," she said.

He looked at her.

"Okay, maybe not a bell, but something." She walked over to the tables in the middle of the lab. "I don't have anything yet for you, your Gibbs-dar is off. Or something." She sucked on the straw of her No-Caf-Pow and looked at the computer screens. "It's going to be a while before my babies have answers for you," she said. "Come back in an hour."

Before Gibbs could reply, Major Mass Spec started beeping. "How do you do that, Gibbs?" she asked as she scuttled over to get the results. "It's like you've hexed all my machines and they know when you're coming and they're as scared of you as McGee used to be, or Jimmy."

"Still scared," Gibbs said, smirking at her.

"Jimmy is not scared of you," Abby said, smirking back. "He just knows that you'll kill him if you need to. And you don't need to."

"What were you looking at when I came in?" Gibbs said.

"Nothing for your case, Bossman," she said. "Just something I was testing." She handed over his results. "This is what you need — the material under the petty officer's nails was soot, with a high percentage of carbon — similar to what you would see in wood ash — plus talcum, which you wouldn't find in wood ash."

"What then?" Gibbs asked.

"I'd say paper," Abby said. "It has fillers, and talcum often is one. I've got Major Mass Spec working on it to figure out what kind of paper. That might tell us more about what your petty officer was involved in, but since he didn't have burns, it was after the fire had burned out and cool, so he's probably not your arsonist."

"Thanks, Abbs," Gibbs said. He tipped his head toward the cooler in the lab and she saw a new drink sitting on the shelf.

"How does he do that?" She wondered as she headed over for the fresh drink, slurping the last of her drink out of the cup before tossing it in the trash. She frowned she used up an awful lot of plastic cups — did they make a reusable one? Because that would save a lot of plastic from going into the landfill, even if the Navy Yard did recycle most things. Before she could get sidetracked, she tucked the results from before into her lab coat pocket so nobody else would see them. Jimmy was the only one who needed to know that her being late didn't mean anything except maybe that they had less time than she thought. She wondered if she could run the test again next week, just to be sure, but she knew it was useless. She hadn't rushed the test this time and she definitely should have seen results in the blood test if she was pregnant. Sighing, she settled down to organize the results from the mass spectrometer for her notes in the case file. Maybe it was time to think about adopting.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

When they didn't wrap up the case until after 8 p.m., Ziva didn't know whether to be irritated that she and Damon had canceled their date or relieved that she could go home and fall into bed. Hopefully, tonight she could sleep. Nobody on the team had noticed, yet, but caffeine could only take her so far. She reminded herself that she needed to finish her coffee before she got to the office tomorrow. Tony liked to snoop, and a coffee cup in her wastebox — no, basket — would make him curious. She could not afford him to wonder if everything was all right.

She could not allow any of them to know, though Damon made it clear he thought she needed to talk to somebody. That was not her way. She could not — would not — tell a stranger what had happened. It was in in the past. Somalia and Mossad were behind her, and they needed to stay there. The dreams would go away. They always had before.


	16. Chapter 16

_**AN:** I mentioned at the beginning that JetGibbs had been extremely helpful in beta-reading a section of this — more than three years ago now. Now we're at this section. Any and all mistakes are mine and not hers. I actually drafted this next chunk before I started Life. This story's been simmering for a while. And for those wondering why the queen of Fade to Black scenes had a BDSM tag on the story, wonder no longer. ;)_

* * *

_Tuesday, August 17, 2010_

The next afternoon, the team and Cooper gathered around the autopsy table as Ducky pointed out the welts marking Petty Officer Santos from shoulder to knee.

"This man has been tortured," Ziva said. "But he did not have access to classified information. It does not make sense."

"He wasn't tortured," Jimmy said absently.

"You sure, Palmer?" Gibbs didn't bark, but it was close.

Jimmy jerked his head up, and Tony watched as his face flushed. "I'm... I'm sure, Gibbs." He gulped. "He was playing a scene, and not for the first time."

"A scene?" Ziva asked.

Tony opened his mouth to explain when Tim stepped forward to look at the body. "Jimmy's right. Somebody experienced caned him. This was fairly skillful, with even strokes. It takes more practice than you'd think."

"Something you want to share, McGee?" Gibbs said, his voice dangerous.

Tony's mouth stayed open, mostly because he couldn't pick his jaw back up off the ground. He stared at Tim and Jimmy for a minute before the answer clicked into his brain. "Abby." He kept his eyes on Tim, who looked up and let his lips quirk briefly into a smile.

"Who else?" Tim said.

"I am lost," Ziva said. "What are you talking about?"

Ducky spoke for the first time since Jimmy had joined the discussion. "They mean our petty officer was part of the BDSM community in the area, and from the looks of it, a regular submissive."

Gibbs stalked over to the video link to the lab.

"Abby. Autopsy. Now."

"On my way, Bossman," she said.

The lab was silent as they waited for Abby, but Tony could see Josh Cooper looking around at everybody. He clearly understood what they were talking about, but the flush in his cheeks and the way he wasn't meeting anybody's eyes left Tony wondering if he had played, or if he was just uncomfortable with the subject.

Within a couple of minutes she was bouncing into the lab. "What's up, Gibbs?"

He jerked his head toward the body on the table. "This on purpose?"

Abby walked over and studied the corpse. After a minute, she spoke. "Sure. Your guy's a sub. He must have a pretty high tolerance for pain, too, if he took this much from a cane."

"Man?" Gibbs said.

"Not necessarily," she said. "Canes aren't particularly heavy. A woman could easily have wielded this one." She pointed to his wrists and ankles. "He was tied up while this was going on, probably with lined cuffs. Anything else would have left either cuts or friction burns." As her fingers highlighted the bruises, Tony found himself agreeing.

"Any way to tell how heavy the cuffs were, Abs?" Tony asked.

She shrugged. "He's a pretty strong guy, and they left dark bruises. I'd say heavy-duty. Probably leather. Metal cuffs would have broken the skin." She scanned her eyes over the body again. "Any marks on his front?"

"The stab wounds in his chest make it difficult to determine," Ducky said.

"Was his lifestyle the reason he's dead?" Abby asked.

"Abs, we just found out he played," Tim said. "He was found in Anacostia, but not close enough to a club to know for sure that he was there before he died."

"What do you mean he played?" Ziva said. She wrapped her arms around herself. "This does not look like playing to me. We were trained to torture people this way in Mossad to extract information."

"I'll explain later," Tony said. "Boss, you want us to go back to the area and start asking around at clubs?"

Gibbs shook his head. "I'll take McGee. If we have to send somebody in undercover you can't already be known as an agent."

"Then you and McGee can't both go," Abby said.

"She's right, Boss," Tim replied. "If we have to send in a pair, we need somebody who can pass as a dom to Tony's sub, and that means either you or me, unless you want Abby undercover."

"Hey!" Tony reflexively objected.

"He's right, Tony," Abby said.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Fine, so Ziva goes, then."

"I still do not understand what is going on," she said.

Gibbs boosted himself onto one of the empty autopsy tables and motioned toward Abby. "Explain."

Tony joined Gibbs, while Ziva just leaned back against the table. Josh stayed off to the side, and Tony couldn't blame him. Ducky pulled his chair over, while Tim and Jimmy stayed with Abby. Tony suppressed a smile as he noticed Jimmy's ears were still pink.

"OK, so our dead petty officer was a sub in a D/S relationship," Abby said.

"I am already confused," Ziva said. "I know many languages, but this is as incomprehensible as the computer explanations you and McGee offer."

"D/S stands for dominant/submissive," Tim said, his voice taking on its McLecture cadence. "There's a lot of different levels, but basically the sub sets the boundaries for what is okay and what isn't — punishment, limits and who administers them — and the dom works within those. It sets up a reciprocal power exchange." He glanced at Abby, who nodded. "For example, if Abs and I were playing a scene, she would trust me to give her what she needs, and I would make the decisions about what we do, within the boundaries she set." He clicked his fingers, and Abby sank to her knees, head bowed. "Whatever happens, the dom controls it." He bent over and whispered in her ear as he took his hand to the back of her neck and squeezed. After a minute, Tony could see her shoulders slump as she relaxed.

"What did you do, McGee?" Gibbs said.

"He dropped her into subspace," Jimmy said. He turned to Tim. "Did you really?"

Tim nodded. "She's cooperating, but she's in a very light stage of it." He started stroking the top of her head and she leaned into his leg. He looked back at Jimmy. "Can you explain subspace? I know the theory, but you can probably explain it better."

Jimmy nodded. "It's... You feel very floaty and disconnected from your senses. Abby told me one time she got some of the same feelings from deep meditation at her yoga classes. I haven't tried yoga, so I don't know, but it would seem logical." He shrugged. "You can't really think in subspace. You're just trusting your dom to know what you need."

Tim took over, still stroking Abby's hair. "That's the flip side of the equation. Subs get off on being cared for, giving up power and the ability to make decisions. Doms need the trust the sub places in them to provide what the sub needs and the caretaking responsibility that goes along with it."

Tony snorted. "Well, that fits. I should call you McDom instead of McMom." He wanted to ask questions, but figured they were best left for home. Not that he was completely surprised Tim had played with Abby, but he seemed so comfortable with it. Tony wondered why Tim had never brought up the idea with him. Not that he wanted to try it, but if it was something Tim liked...

"Wait. Are you saying you have done this, McGee?" Ziva asked.

He nodded, then bent down. "Abs, time to come back," he said. She straightened slowly, then took Tim's hand so he could pull her to her feet. "You haven't lost your touch, Timmy," she said.

"You beat Abby?" Ziva sounded shocked. "But Abby is not weak. And you do not do things like that."

"It's not like that," Abby said. "It's, well, a turn-on. It's not punishment."

"Petty Officer Santos looks like he was punished," Ziva said.

Jimmy shook his head. "No. From the markings, his dom sent him flying." He thought for a second. "Have you heard of the concept of a runner's high? That rush you feel during a hard run as endorphins start to kick in."

She nodded. "Yes, it is the mark of a good workout."

"It's the same thing. The tools vary, but done right, a spanking, flogging, or whipping triggers those same brain chemicals. Spanking can be done with a hand or a paddle. Floggers are a collection of strands of leather or other materials attached to a handle. Some people prefer whips to floggers. Depending on the intensity, you can be flying for a few minutes or all night."

"So how does this work?" Gibbs said. "Could Santos has been accidentally killed by this dom guy?"

Abby shook her head. "No way," she said. "Not if he was stabbed." She pointed at the welts. "These could easily be a day old. They're visible, which means his dom used a lot of force. But any dom who could mark him that well without breaking the skin wouldn't have missed signs of distress, even if the guy didn't safeword."

Gibbs just raised an eyebrow. Tony wished he could hear what Gibbs was thinking.

"Boss, it's like in interrogation," Tim said. "You're not just asking questions. You're reading body language, seeing what the person isn't saying. Even if the dirtbag doesn't say he's guilty, you can tell from his nonverbal cues."

"I must say, it's a fascinating concept," Ducky said. "The psychology behind it has been explored over the years, but societal norms have often skewed people's perceptions of it. For many years, practitioners were classified as having a mental disorder."

Now it was Abby's turn to roll her eyes. "Please. Do any of us sound crazy?"

"More than normal?" Tony quipped.

"Tony," Tim said.

Tony shut up.

"See," Abby said. "It doesn't even have to be a game. Gibbs, you're a total dom. Timmy's not far behind. He's probably enough to top anybody here but you."

"Abby!" The whole team winced.

"Need a brain brillo after that one, Abs," Tony said.

"Yeah, me too," Tim said.

"Sorry," she said, not looking the least bit apologetic. "My point is that some people are natural tops. I'm a switch. I can take either role depending on who I'm playing with."

"And you're saying-without-saying that Jimmy and I are subs," Tony said. "Well, Jimmy at least makes sense."

"Not to me," Gibbs said. "But it doesn't have to. I think we have enough to ask the right questions." He slid down from the table. "With me, Ziva. Cooper, you come too."

After they walked out, Ducky turned to face the remaining team members. "I admire your candor," he said. "That was more information than most people would be willing to share, even if it does help us locate our killer. But I would suggest you remain aware of the interplay among you during the next few days."

Tony nodded. "We embarrassed Josh. And Ziva isn't comfortable with this," he said.

"I rather suspect it is hitting a little close to home for her," Ducky said. "She has never spoken much about what happened in Somalia, though we have all seen the scars on her back."

Tony frowned. "We'd better get this case closed fast, before Gibbs decides he has to send us undercover. If Tim and I go in, she'll have to work tech. Cooper doesn't have enough experience, and I'm not sure Vance would okay taking him into the field, even working tech."

"Gibbs could..." Jimmy trailed off as the others burst out laughing. "OK, you're right. Gibbs couldn't."

"Not without blowing up the van," Abby said. "Ducky, should I talk to her when she gets back?"

Ducky thought for a minute. "I would suggest we see how things play out. It would be better if she seeks out somebody than if we approach her."

At that, the team scattered and went back to work. Within the hour, Abby had a match on the fingerprints found on the knife and had called Gibbs with the suspect's name, a lowlife with a long rap sheet who lived in Anacostia. They found the guy at home, hungover with bloody clothes in his washing machine. He didn't last five minutes in the interrogation room before he told Gibbs how he had attacked Santos for drug money. When the sailor fought back, he pulled his knife and killed him. The team didn't even have to stay late.

"Go on, get out of here," Gibbs said.


	17. Chapter 17

_**AN:** For those who said Tim and Tony needed to talk, you've gotten your wish. Lots of conversations among the team right now. That makes this a VERY long chapter — almost 3500 words. Hopefully that will tide you over until Monday. Now, off to try and get back on track for NaNoWriMo — since I went to work Tuesday, I've written less than 1,000 words. That's got to change if I want to finish the first draft. If anybody wants to slip Caf-Pow to my plot bunnies, I won't complain. _

* * *

Tony bided his time until he and Tim were home and he had chicken baking in the oven.

He joined Tim on the couch in the living room, where the younger man sat with his eyes closed. With the warm weather, he wore just a faded pair of shorts, and the scars from his shoulder injury stood out against his fair skin.

"You OK?" Tony asked.

Tim nodded without opening his eyes. "Just tired. It feels like we haven't had a day off in weeks."

Tony wrapped an arm around his shoulder. "So we make it an early night tonight." His questions could wait until tomorrow.

"Ask, Tony," Tim said.

"Huh?"

Tim snorted without opening his eyes. "You've been wondering about Abby and me since we did that little demonstration in Autopsy. Just ask."

"You two played?"

Tim nodded as he opened his eyes. "Some. Not seriously, not like Santos did." He shrugged. "We actually played more when we stopped being exclusive."

"Do you..." He tried to figure out how to ask. "Do you miss it?" He looked down, afraid of seeing Tim's expression.

Tim wouldn't let him get away with it, though. He took Tony's chin in hand and guided Tony's eyes back to his face. "It's not like that for me," he said. "I don't... It's not the games."

Tony turned so he was facing Tim. "Explain it to me. Because watching you and Abby... It was like you just fell right into it."

Tim nodded. "She was cooperating," he said. "She's not normally that easy to take down. And we played a lot back when we were seeing each other, for a lot of reasons, so I had a lot of practice."

"That's how you knew the guy's dom was skilled," he said.

Tim nodded. "Abby's a good teacher, but it took me a while to learn." He slid his hand down Tony's arm. "Abby enjoys receiving the pain, and I'm guessing Jimmy does, too. For me, it's not about that, it's about control. And caretaking. In that situation, Abby was trusting me to take care of her, to give her what she needed." He paused. "That's something I need to feel anchored in a relationship, and with Abby, she could only give that to me in a D/s context."

As the pieces clicked into place, Tony started laughing. "So me being screwed up by my family actually attracts you?" He snorted. Between laughs, he said, "Next time anyone claims you're the sane one in this marriage, I'm disputing that."

He watched Tim try and keep a straight face before breaking down into laughter, dropping his head into Tony's shoulder. By the time their laughter had subsided to the occasional snicker, they were snuggled together.

"Seriously, Tony," Tim said. "You said it yourself, way back when we first started dating. I need to be needed. You do. Abby didn't want to."

He sighed. "I know." He smiled. "In a few months, I'm really going to need you, or at least your help. I have no idea what to do with a baby."

"You know we're going to have everybody tripping over themselves to help once the baby's born," Tim said.

"Just keep reminding me of that," Tony said. Then he frowned. "But not when we're talking about sex. We don't want to warp our poor kid before she's even born."

Now it was Tim's turn to snort. "We're going to wait and let her aunts and uncles do it after she's born?" As the timer in the kitchen beeped, Tim stood up. "Come on, let's get dinner. I'm starved."

As they finished up the meal, Tony turned the conversation back to the topic. "So does the whole 'me being screwed up by my family' bit explain why you guys assumed I was a sub?"

"No. Well, yes. But no."

"Try again, McIncomprehensible?"

Tim forked another piece of chicken and thought while he chewed. Swallowing, he said, "How do you feel when Gibbs headslaps you?"

Tony considered it. "Settled," he finally said. "He keeps me from getting too crazy and out there. When he smacks me, I know he's telling me to get back on track."

"And if he doesn't slap you?"

Tony frowned and thought about it. "If it doesn't happen often enough, I start to think I'm falling down on the job. As much as it's discipline, it's also a sign of affection. You know Gibbs. Tough love is the only kind he has." He thought back and laughed. "The first year Kate was on the team, she slapped me one time we were lunching with Ducky. I threatened to dump her lunch in her lap if she ever did it again."

Tim grinned. "Exactly. You know you can goof off because if you get out of control, Gibbs will knock some sense into you. You give up that element of control to him because you trust him to give you just enough leeway and no more. And he's the only one you trust to do that."

Tony blinked. He tipped his head to one side as he thought about what Tim said. Thought about Gibbs and the slaps. He dropped his chin to his chest, then started laughing. "You're saying Gibbs is my Dom?" He wrapped his arms around his ribs as the laughter got to be too much. "That's just... sick and twisted." Still, he laughed.

Tim grinned, his smile lighting up his face. "Sick and twisted maybe, but true. And not even that sick and twisted. It's about psychology, not sex. At least not always."

"So you and Abby just played psychological games?" He enjoyed teasing Tim.

"Oh, no, we had sex," Tim said, smirking. "With Abby, the psychology is part of how she enjoys sex."

"I thought that's what the coffin was for," he said, returning the smirk. "Any other kinks she has you'd care to share?"

"Think you can handle them?" he said. "Come on, let's go to bed. Maybe I can demonstrate a few."

**-NCIS-NCIS-NCIS-NCIS-NCIS-NCIS-**

Abby snuggled into Jimmy's side on the couch. "You're awfully quiet tonight," she said. "You still freaked over outing us earlier?"

She could feel him shrug. "It's not that. It's..." He ran a hand through her hair. "I always figured Tim subbed for you, too."

At his sigh, she knew what was bothering him. "You think that makes a difference to me?"

"Well, yeah. I mean it has to, doesn't it?" Jimmy paused. "It's been years, and you still dropped right into subspace as soon as he touched you. How do I compete with that?"

Abby wanted to laugh, but knew that would just hurt Jimmy even more. "It's not a competition," she said instead. "Even if Tim wasn't married to Tony, it still wouldn't work between us. It doesn't matter whether we played or not, or how we played." She frowned as she tried to figure out how to explain it. "Tim and I, we kind of worked. But we only worked because of the games, whether either of us likes to admit it or not. He needs something from a partner that I could only give him if we went D/s. And I like subbing sometimes, but I can't do only that. It's not me."

"But you went right down," Jimmy said.

She shook her head. "Not really," she replied. "When I sub, I fight it. I'm not like you. I rebel and push back, and a dom has to be strong to take me down. When Tim and I first started dating, I didn't think we were going to be able to play. He didn't like subbing, and I didn't think he was strong enough to dominate me. Even Kate made him stutter back then; Gibbs practically short-circuited his brain." She thought back. "It wasn't until we were working in the lab together during one of his TAD cases that I realized I might have read him wrong. We were hacking away, trying to break an encryption. I don't remember what started it, but I was arguing with him over how to do it and he just... made me. I don't know if it was the tone of his voice or what he said, but next thing I knew I was doing what he had ordered me to. And — sorry, Jimmy — it was hot. When he came back to my place that night, I suggested we switch roles, and that's when things clicked." She shrugged. "Today I didn't fight him going down because we were just demonstrating. I made it easy for him. Usually I'd be resisting. It's okay when we play, but it's a lousy basis for a relationship, especially since neither of us wanted to do more than play with it." She snuggled closer, feeling his strong arm pull her into a hug. "That's one of the things I've learned since we've been together. We can play and you let me lead, but then we're not playing and you can take the lead."

Jimmy pulled away, and she looked up at him. "So we can switch around and that's what you need," he said, wrinkling his forehead. "I think I get it. I mean, I want to get it. I just..." He sighed.

"I know." She kept her eyes on his, but decided to shift the subject. "Did Ducky say anything to you about it after we left?"

"No, we just went back to completing the petty officer's autopsy," he said. "I don't think he will. Did you notice he was the only one who didn't seem surprised by the discussion?"

Abby nodded. "Duckman knows everything," she said. "Even before he got that psychology degree, he knew a lot about why people do what they do. I hope he's not right about Ziva, though." She frowned.

"He probably is," Jimmy said. "She didn't want to look at any of us after we explained everything."

Abby snuggled against him, tucking her face against his shoulder. "If she doesn't talk to somebody, you realize you're going to have to be the one who brings it up."

"Why-?" Jimmy broke off. "Right, because she won't be comfortable talking to you or Tim about it. But why can't Tony talk to her?"

Abby shook her head. "Tony doesn't like those games," she said. "He didn't know until today that Tim and I used to play. And Ziva's only going to listen if it's coming from somebody who does like it." She interlaced her fingers with Jimmy's. "Don't worry, I'm sure the Duckman will help you figure out what to say."

**-NCIS-NCIS-NCIS-NCIS-NCIS-NCIS-**

Gibbs stood in the basement working on the nursery set he was building for his future granddaughter. As he ran sandpaper over the top of the changing table, he heard footsteps on the stairs. He looked over to see Ducky descending.

"Hey, Duck. What's on your mind?"

The medical examiner pulled the wooden chair out from under the workbench and sat down. Gibbs turned back to his work and waited.

"You seemed rather confused by our discussion and demonstration in Autopsy this afternoon, Jethro. I thought it would be wise to stop by and see if you had any additional questions."

Gibbs continued sanding as he thought about what Ducky had said. Once Abby had come up with the fingerprints, he had pushed the whole idea from his head. If it wasn't relevant to the case, it was just information about the private lives of his honorary kids, and more information than he really wanted to know. But one question concerned him.

"Does Tim... Does he do that stuff to Tony? Whipping and flogging?"

"Oh, Jethro. It was quite clear that Tim's experience with scenes was news to dear Anthony today." Ducky paused, and Gibbs turned to look at him.

"Duck?"

"Anthony was the first one to figure out that Timothy and Jimmy had their expertise courtesy of Abigail, but he had to figure it out," Ducky said. "I could see the moment when he realized it." He paused. "Jethro, you do realize the three of them took quite a risk revealing that information today. Many people still have misconceptions about this subculture and those who dabble in it. They could not have known how we would react."

"Not sure how I'm reacting," Gibbs said. "When Abby started talking about doms and tops and subs, I got lost. Never played like that. Never understood people who did. And then Abby starts saying I'm a dom. She think of me that way?"

"Oh, no, Jethro. Not is a sexual way, surely. Oh, Abigail might enjoy a bit of innuendo now and then, but that's just her manner. Much like Anthony, she sees you as a father. But Abigail also is well attuned to people, and she is quite right. Psychologically, you have a very dominant personality. One does not have to be immersed in the BDSM culture to determine that, just as Anthony is clearly a submissive. He needs to give up control to ground himself." Ducky stood and walked over to look at him from across the half-finished piece of furniture. "Not all people are so clearly defined."

Gibbs nodded, glad for the opening to ask the other question that had concerned him. "When Abby said McGee was a top..." He tried to figure out how to word his question. "When they dated, he was stammering and shy, tripping over his own feet like a puppy. But then watching him today, he was like he is now — calm and confident. Did playing those games cause the change?"

Ducky smiled. "Oh, I imagine there was some effect," he said. "But not in the way you're thinking."

Gibbs just raised a single eyebrow.

"Timothy has always been quite confident in certain areas," he said. "Even from the beginning, he was a different person in front of a computer, one who was as sure of himself there as Anthony is undercover."

As Ducky paused, Gibbs thought about what he had said. "So the games helped McGee take that confidence and bring it into the field?"

"I believe it most likely," Ducky said. "The psychological tendencies that these games and lifestyles tap into are something that applies to all humans in one manner or another. Not all of us choose to explore it in this fashion, however. And a person's choices in the bedroom might not be their choices in the rest of their lives. Some dominant personalities prefer to have an area of their lives in which they can give up control, while others find it to be the one area in which they can take control."

Gibbs continued moving his hands across the wood, removing all the rough spots. "I guess that's part of what I don't get. Why would anybody give up that much control to another person? I've been whipped before; it's damn painful." He moved the sandpaper aside and ran his hand over the wood searching for places he had missed.

"Jethro, the two experiences are not comparable," Ducky said. He sighed. "It is often difficult for people who are firmly in one camp or the other to fully understand the attraction of the other side. You saw some of that today when Timothy deferred to Jimmy to explain what Abigail was feeling when he took her down. As he said, he understands the theory, but not the practice. I imagine Jimmy, although not explicitly saying it, has difficulty understanding why a dominant enjoys his or her role."

"Try, Duck. I need to wrap my mind around this."

Ducky turned away and walked across the basement, then back. After a few more times back and forth, he spoke. "When you were a recruit in the Corps, how did you adjust to the discipline?"

Gibbs frowned and thought back almost 35 years. "At first, it was restrictive," he said. "I felt like I'd escaped one prison in Stillwater, one set of rules with my father, only to find myself in a different kind of prison." He smiled. "My DI at boot camp kicked my ass all over the camp before he got through to me." He reflected on his last week in Stillwater. "Once I stopped fighting it, there was something I appreciated about the structure. It was fair, predictable. After growing up in a town where who you were mattered more than what kind of person you were, I appreciated a life where everybody had to earn their place."

Ducky nodded. "And you excelled in that structure. Likewise, you have your infamous rules."

"Sure. Shannon said it best. She said everybody should have a code to live by," he said.

"Because having rules gives you something to hold onto, something that anchors you," Ducky said. "In many ways, that is what a submissive is seeking through these experiences. It is human nature to need some structure. You have your rules. Anthony has head slaps from you. Jimmy chooses to have Abigail provide the structure when they play. Some submissives enter a complete 24/7 relationship with a dominant because they have such a need for that structure."

Gibbs thought about what Ducky had said. He relied on the rules, sure. Sometimes he allowed exceptions, like when he gave Tony and McGee his blessing to date. But the more chaotic work was, or the more he had going on in his personal life, the more he relied upon the rules to keep him from making a mistake. "Duck, either you're a genius or I'm an idiot, but that makes more sense than anything else I've heard today." He put the sandpaper down and stretched. "So let me see if I've got this right. Tony needs the head slaps. That's his way of staying focused, to have me do it for him."

"Exactly," Ducky said. "They don't have the same effect on the others, and I suspect you realize that because you don't use them as often with them."

"No, I don't," Gibbs said. He recalled the jetpack case right after Christmas. "So when I gave McGee the lead on the jetpack case, that was the same thing, but for him. He needs the chance to control what's going on. It helps him to take that control the same way it helps Tony to give it up." His mind jumped back a year. "That's why I had to get in Tony's face in that case last year, the one where we screwed up while I was retired. He needed something to keep him from spinning out of control, and I wasn't there running things the way I usually am."

"Quite right, Jethro." Ducky smiled. "Anthony was a good leader in your absence, but that's because he knew he was fulfilling that role. Being thrust into it unexpectedly, especially while you were here and working, unsettled his foundations."

"So how does the pain fit in?" Gibbs said. He remembered the extensive beating the petty officer had taken. "I get the control issues, at least I think I do. But who volunteers to be beaten? I don't hit DiNozzo that hard."

"No, no," Ducky replied. "That is what distinguishes you from that monster of an uncle. I suspect that is also one reason why Timothy never discussed these activities with Tony. He knew they would have negative associations for him. I rather think that after your trip to Somalia earlier this year, Timothy would recoil somewhat from administering such a session, even if he was still with Abigail." He resumed his pacing. "Just as the dominant and submissive roles reflect psychological orientations, the choice to use pain as a tool has its roots in psychology. You, Anthony, Ziva, and I have rather negative experiences with pain as a tool for torture. I would find it quite difficult to separate, psychologically, the playful behaviors used in acting out a scene from my experiences in Afghanistan, for example. Abigail and Jimmy don't have those same sorts of occurrences in their background, so those associations are not present." Ducky stopped and looked at him, and Gibbs found he didn't want to look away. "In many ways, that is my concern."

"You think Abby would hurt Palmer?" Gibbs glared at his friend. "That's not Abby."

"No, no. Not at all. My concern is with Ziva. She has been through much worse treatment than all of us except perhaps for Anthony, and hers is much more recent. She did not seem comfortable during the discussion, which is hardly surprising. I believe we shall have to observe how she interacts with the rest of you, especially Timothy and Abigail, in the next few days."


	18. Chapter 18

After Ziva washed her dinner dishes, she found herself retreating upstairs, drawn to the photo of the team hanging on the wall in her bedroom. For the first time since that moment in Autopsy earlier in the day, she allowed herself to think about what she had learned. McGee had all but admitted to flogging Abby, and Jimmy had said he let her do the same to him. She looked at the smiling faces in front of her, and found herself at a loss for words. She tried to picture the McGee she had known for five years wielding a whip, laying down welts on Abby's pale skin. As she did, she slid her hand under the hem of her shirt and felt the scars that lingered there. She remembered the look in Saleem's eyes as he stood over her, lashing out again and again until her skin was torn and bleeding.

When she had told Jack earlier this year about Eli and her time in Somalia, she said the team had seen all her scars. Yet as her mind drifted back to the long days of captivity in the desert, she knew she had lied, not only to Jack, but to herself. She had been unable to pass the NCIS psychological evaluation without discussing some of what had happened, yet she had said just the minimum. When Eli sent Ben-Gidon to take her back to Mossad, Gibbs had tapped into a little of the layers she had kept under wraps. His whispered words to her in interrogation that day had dissolved a barrier she had kept firm since she had learned the hard way that she could not trust those who claimed to be her family.

Still, she had never talked about those days in the desert with anybody. She did not believe any of her family could truly understand what it had been like. The men could not understand what it was like to be violated, repeatedly, by Saleem and his men. Tony could possibly understand the mental torment she had endured, how she had wished every day for them to go too far and inflict a fatal injury. She had told him once before that she would never be taken alive. Yet she had allowed Saleem's men to capture her, to hold her prisoner for weeks. At first, it was her penance. Her father had sent her on this mission, and she would not let him down. As the days went by and she realized nobody would come for her and she would die in the desert, she lost that resolve. She lost her will to do anything, even end her life.

She was certain Saleem's men would end it for her, but they did not. They gave her just enough food and water to keep her alive, not enough to leave her strong enough to escape. They beat her repeatedly, whipping her until her skin was torn and bleeding and then allowing her to heal just enough to let them do it again. They punched and kicked her, and she would not fight back. That would just prolong her life, and she intended to die there. They raped her violently, leaving her torn and bleeding from their rough treatment.

She knew she could not ask Abby how she could hurt Jimmy. That was something she could not wrap her mind around. Yes, Abby wore collars and chains and slept in a coffin. But that was quirky. This was... wrong. To think McGee, sweet, gentle McGee, had whipped Abby, stood over her the same way Saleem had stood over Ziva, both men striking soft skin, damaging it. Her stomach churned at the thought. Then she imagined Abby turning around and inflicting that same pain on Jimmy. He was just a year older than her, but always seemed much younger. He was innocent. They all were. Perhaps that was the problem. They did not realize what they were doing. She thought back to the time Tony and Nikki Jardine had gone to Iraq on a case. McGee had wanted to go. He saw it not as a dangerous mission, but as a chance to earn his dots. No, his stripes. To earn his stripes. For all she knew, he had approached the mission in Somalia the same way. Combat, to McGee, was more like one of his online games. He did not understand the reality of war. Perhaps he did now after his experiences in Saleem's camp. But still he was able to make Abby kneel today, to make her submit. She had seen it, and still she could not picture it. She could not imagine submitting to anybody, much less to somebody who planned to hurt her. That was even less comprehensible to her than hurting somebody you supposedly loved.

She turned away from the pictures, unable to look at them any more. She forced her mind to other things until she was ready for bed. As she changed, she automatically pulled out her heavier winter pajamas, hoping they would warm her. She knew the thermometer said it was almost 90 degrees, but she shivered and pulled the blankets tight around her.

An hour later, she was counting the textured bumps on the ceiling to distract her mind enough to sleep. She was up to 4,398 when she finally fell asleep.

_Ziva strained her arms against the bonds that held her to the bed. Heavy leather cuffs bound her, hand and foot, pulling her toward the corners of the bed. She looked over to see Jimmy spreadeagled against the wall, his back to her. Abby walked in and started laying down stripes across his back with a whip, each stroke raising a welt on Jimmy's pale skin. As she continued, the skin began to shred, blood welling up with each new stripe. Ziva yelled for Abby to stop, but Jimmy urged her to keep going, keep him flying. Ziva felt her stomach roil, but fought it back, knowing she would suffocate in her own vomit because she was tied down. Just when she thought her control would not allow her to hold back any longer, McGee walked in the door. He snapped his fingers, and Abby fell to her knees. As she did, he tore her clothes off, then bent her over the end of the bed. As he started beating her with a cane, Ziva fought against her bonds to reach over and stop him. If she did not, she knew she was next. She pulled against the leather restraining her, gathering her breath for one last yell. Maybe if she was loud enough, Gibbs or Tony or Ducky would hear and stop this. She screamed loud and long._

Ziva woke up to find her muscles rigid, arms and legs splayed out across her bed. She looked at her alarm clock. 4 a.m., too early to pretend she was awake for the day. She forced her breathing to slow and slowly relaxed her muscles.

After Ziva managed to make her muscles relax, she got up and stripped down, reaching for a towel in the moonlit room. She wiped the sweat from her skin and felt her limbs tremble as her adrenaline started to dissipate. She thought of going downstairs for some juice, but she could not risk running into Damon. Not right now. She might tell him what was wrong, and she could not do that. She could not risk it, not with Sarah in the house. Not when Sarah had just managed to decide — again — to keep the baby. If Ziva told Sarah what her brother had done with Abby, what he was capable of, she could not take that back and she could not undo that damage. She did not approve of what McGee had done, but she could not interfere without talking to him first. She just did not think she could talk to him. But not today. She hoped that Gibbs would not pair her with McGee or send her to help Abby in the lab. She did not think she could handle that.

Ziva pulled a fresh tank top and shorts from the dresser. The soft cotton on her skin was comforting, so different than the scratchy, stiff clothes she had lived in for so long in Somalia. She decided to strip the sheets from the bed — quietly — so she would have no reminders of her nightmare. As she tucked the fresh fitted sheet along the mattress, Ziva put her hand on the headboard as she straightened up. The wooden slats were scratched and Ziva found herself back in Autopsy watching McGee bring Abby to her knees. Did he tie Tony up to this bed, like the boyfriend got tied up in the killer Humvee case? Had he tied up Abby on this bed? Or was this Tony's bed? Images rushed in, and sounds of Tony begging for mercy, though she'd never heard him do anything but walk his mouth — run his mouth? — when they both had been captured together. Even to SecNav and to Eli, Tony had not been cowed. To Saleem, he had pushed the lines until Ziva had been sure they all would die there. She could not picture this.

As Ziva slipped between the fresh sheets, inhaling the clean smell so different from the stink of Somalia, she forced her brain away from those memories. Surely she had misunderstood everything. She would talk to Tony in the morning and find out everything she was imagining was wrong.


	19. Chapter 19

The next morning, Gibbs was in the office before it was light. He found the folder on his computer where McGee had put the security camera feeds for a case a couple of years ago and watched Autopsy and the lab, as well as the main entrance and elevators.

Abby and Jimmy arrived about 0630, and Abby kissed his cheek when they separated. Jimmy was grinning as he wiped the red lipstick from his face, scrubbing a bit at one spot after he checked his reflection in the polished steel paper towel holder by the morgue sink.

Cooper was the next one in the door, with Tony and McGee right behind him. They stopped before they made it through security, and the trio walked back outside. Gibbs frowned.

Ducky entered the building before the boys, as Ducky referred to them, had returned. He carried a coffee cup and pastry bag. Gibbs killed the feeds on his screen before the medical examiner got off the elevator.

"Sarah is fine, Jethro," Ducky said in response to his raised eyebrow. "Ziva made dinner for them last night, a pasta dish of sorts, and was gone running before Sarah got up for work. Damon drove her to the coffee shop, and if either of them noticed anything untoward about Ziva's behavior, Sarah did not share that information with me."

Gibbs nodded and sipped his coffee. "Thanks, Duck."

The medical examiner looked at him a moment longer, then turned and headed for the back elevator. Once he was away from the bullpen, Gibbs opened the folder again. Good, the feeds still were there. Gibbs couldn't shake the feeling that one day his computer would just devour them without warning.

He still didn't see DiNozzo, McGee and Cooper, but his last agent was just walking into the building. She tossed a large cup in the trash, bigger than she usually got when she chose tea. The resolution on the feeds wasn't good enough for Gibbs to truly read her, so he killed them once he saw her enter the elevator.

By the time she stepped off a few minutes later, Gibbs was poring over paperwork, the appropriate scowl on his face. Ziva didn't greet him, just sat at her desk and turned her computer on. The fluorescent lights and orange walls didn't make people look good at the best of times, but Gibbs could see more shadows on Ziva's face, even some faint lines on her forehead. He knew the others would arrive any minute now.

"The autopsy report on Petty Officer Santos," he said.

"Do not have it." Ziva didn't look up as she replied.

"Get it from Ducky."

She hesitated, but went without question. The elevator dinged right after she left the bullpen, and Gibbs was glad Ziva had chosen to take the back one downstairs.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Tony hailed Josh as they walked into the building, and was glad the intern turned around before starting through the security checkpoint.

"Come with us for a minute," Tim said, and Josh reversed direction and followed them outside to the parking lot between NCIS and the USS Barry.

Tony didn't stop until they were along the banks of the Potomac, nobody within earshot.

"What's going on?" Josh asked.

"Yesterday, that discussion in Autopsy," Tony said. "That was a lot of information, things you don't usually learn about your coworkers." He grinned as Josh flushed, his face a much brighter red than his hair. "We're not your typical office."

"No kidding." Josh stayed red, but didn't speak.

"We know you and Sarah are spending time together," Tim said. Tony was glad to see no tension in his husband's frame. "We're not here to be the scary older brothers."

"Yet," Tony added, flashing a grin.

"Tony," Tim said, shooting him a glare. "We just wanted to ask you something about yesterday." Now his ears were turning pink, and Tony had a hard time suppressing his smile.

Tim continued: "Sarah's always made one thing very clear. However much we might all banter about things — especially Abby, Tony, Jimmy and me, since Abby and I used to date — Sarah doesn't want to hear anything that indicates that her older brother has a sex life."

"You learned an awful lot about Tim's yesterday," Tony said. "Those are things neither one of us really wants Sarah to know about, and we know Sarah doesn't want to hear about."

Josh's eyes widened. "I'm not going to say a word, I swear. She said she's going to your parents' house for a couple of days anyway, so I won't see her until Friday."

"We didn't think so," Tim said.

"But we wanted to make sure," Tony said. "Just in case."

"I'm planning to forget that yesterday ever happened," Josh said. "All of it."

"Good." Tim clapped him on the back. "Now let's get inside before Gibbs is ready to string all of us up for being late."

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Ziva managed to get in and out of Autopsy without talking to Jimmy or saying anything to Ducky beyond her request for information.

"If the criminal underworld allows us the time, my dear, I plan to pour tea about eleven," Ducky said. "You are more than welcome to join me. I have a rather nice new jasmine tea I believe you will enjoy. Mr. Palmer complains it is rather like drinking flowers, but your palate is more refined than his in this manner."

"Thank you, Ducky," Ziva said. But as she headed upstairs, she could not decide if she should indulge or not. By the time she returned to the bullpen, the rest of the team had their heads down working on their computers. Ziva did the same, focusing on the work.

Later that morning, Ziva was wondering just what she was thinking, believing she could talk to Tony. Not about this. Perhaps Ducky. He would be a good sounding board.

No, on second thought, she could not. He would be sure to ask questions, and she did not trust herself not to give answers that would tell the wise medical examiner far too much. She also did not want to go near the lab, as she had a difficult time with the information she learned yesterday.

How could Abby and Jimmy do such things? Or McGee, who seemed so mild-mannered. When she had profiled him for Mossad, he must have been doing those things. Also when she started with the team and he was, what was Tony's phrase, so green he was Oscar. No Kermit. The little fuzzy frog. But Tony was right in many ways. And yet now he could talk about whips and caning and flogging and other words she only associated with pain. And he seemed to enjoy them. Abby, too. Ziva could not deny she was less surprised at that, now that she knew. Abby's choices always had been... different. And Ziva knew that some people liked those sorts of games. She had learned some in Mossad. But she could not fathom the mindset that Jimmy talked about yesterday, could not imagine how Abby could allow herself to show such weakness. She could imagine with Jimmy, perhaps. But the idea of Tim being one who wielded those tools of destruction was more than she could handle.

She focused her attention on her computer and worked her way through the case files that had been sitting there waiting for review for his cold case clearance project. She suspected the director had something in mind with this, but she did not know what. She only knew that even with everything going on, Tony was leading the agency with almost 20 percent more cases cleared compared to anybody else and she did not know how he did it. But she would not allow him to win this one, not if she could help it. She allowed the thrill and drive of competition to sink into her blood and focus her attention on the details in the case file.


	20. Chapter 20

_**AN:** No, I did not forget another chapter. And yes, I am evil. _

* * *

Damon walked in the door and saw Jethro's tail wagging in the kitchen doorway. He inhaled as he walked over, trying to figure out what smelled so delicious.

"No wonder Jethro's ignoring me," Damon said as he stood behind the dog. "He has all his attention on what he can beg out of you." He looked past Ziva to the table, which was set for two- "Is that an actual tablecloth?" Damon started thinking about what was in his closet that was dressier than the jeans and henley he'd planned to wear. "What's the occasion?"

Ziva looked over her shoulder, her smile hinting at things she wasn't saying. "We both have the night free, and it is just the two of us." When the dog barked, she added, "And Jethro. But I do not think he will mind if we ignore him as long as I include some ferakh maamer in his bowl."

"No." Damon couldn't help staring. "No, I don't think he'll mind." He took a step back. "I'm going to just clean up a bit."

"As you wish," Ziva said. She turned to face him. "I'll pour you some wine." The black apron that covered her outfit contrasted with the deep red shirt with a neckline that extended below the top of the apron. Damon fled before he did something stupid and drooled.

When he was in his room, door closed, he stripped down and pulled out date clothes. The snug black shirt and dark jeans were more casual than what Ziva had on, but Damon didn't think she'd mind. He was still trying to get past what he'd seen in the kitchen. From the back, the shirt and dark slacks looked like she had just come home from work, but he knew there was no way she'd worn that to the office. Tony would have gotten himself smacked for commenting on it, for one thing, and Ziva definitely wouldn't have been this good of a mood. He put his laundry in the hamper and looked around to see if there was anything else he needed to clean up. He thought about clean sheets — just in case — then reasoned that between the king bed in Ziva's room and his twin bed, they'd be headed upstairs. Still, you never knew. He stripped the bed quickly and remade it with fresh sheets, then looked around to clear up any clutter. It was a basic bedroom — he hadn't bothered to spend much time personalizing it — but it was neat and clean. That would be enough, if they even ended up here. He decided against shoes, but made sure he had everything else before heading out, leaving the door partially open.

He headed back to the kitchen to find the food on the table and two glasses of red wine there waiting for him.

"Good timing," he said. "I'm glad I didn't get stuck in traffic and ruin this — especially since I didn't know it was coming."

Ziva set down the dish she was scrubbing and dried her hands, then steered him to the table. "It could have simmered a bit longer, yes?" she said. "But I thought we might want to enjoy the moment while we have it."

Before he knew what was happening, they were seated and Ziva was lifting her glass of wine.

"Wait," Damon said. "I think this deserves a toast for the chef." He tried to remember the words he'd looked up for their first date, the one that ended up wineless because of Ziva's pain meds. "L'chaim."

She joined the toast, then looked down at her plate, her hand trembling a bit as she set down her glass. "For life," she said. She looked up. "I did not know that you knew Hebrew."

"I don't," Damon said. "But I thought that might be useful to know."

"Yes." Ziva nodded. "Yes, it is." She reached for her glass and sipped. "So, what is the verdict, now that you have toasted the chef? Does it meet your standards?"

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Ziva turned the attention back on Damon, then drank some more wine. She had to take a second, to regain her control. She had not expected that, and she wondered if perhaps there was more she should be watching for. The toast was- Well, it was sweet, and she was not ready for that. Not tonight.

By the time they were finished, the wine bottle was empty and Damon's hand was on her knee.

"How about a movie?" he asked, standing.

"Let us just clear the table first," she said. As she stacked the dishwasher, she focused on her breathing, glad the edges of her mind were just a bit hairy. No, fuzzy. She rinsed and stacked, each dish placed in its spot in the appliance, each piece of silverware allocated to its proper location. When they exited to the living room, she felt steadier. As Damon got the TV set up, Ziva slipped off her shoes and sat on the couch. She moved from her preferred seat curled into the arm of the sofa to sit closer to the middle. She debated for a millisecond before drawing her feet up so they were tucked beneath her. When Damon joined her, she moved toward him as his arm wrapped around her shoulders. When she reached a hand up, his fingertips traced delicate designs across the thin skin at her wrists and she could not stop the shiver.

"I think you'll like this one," he said.

She reached up and turned his face toward hers. "And if I would rather not watch a movie with you?" she asked. "It is rare that we have the house to ourselves." She arched an eyebrow up and let a slow, seductive smile cross her face as she slid her hands down his neck to his shoulders and stretched up. She enjoyed this connection — not since Michael had she found this kind of contact with another. Damon could take her breath away as nobody had in far too long.

When his hands slid down her back to tug her shirt from her slacks, Ziva pulled back. "Perhaps we should take this elsewhere," she said, tipping her head toward his bedroom.

Damon's hands slid up her back until the bracketed her shoulders. "Are you sure?" he asked.

Ziva nodded, and slipped her feet out until they touched the ground. His hands dropped away as she rose, and she reached for his hand, drawing him to his feet. "Come," she said. She walked away, pausing only to look back over her shoulder. "You are coming, yes?"

Damon nodded and followed her.

"Are you going to invite me in?" Ziva asked, resting her hand on the doorknob.

"But-" Damon stopped, then started again. "I ended up with the twin bed, remember? It's going to be a tight fit for two of us."

Ziva put her hand on his chest. "I'm sure we can figure something out. After all, we are two creative people, yes?"

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Damon opened the door, then bowed and motioned for her to enter. He wouldn't lie — he wanted Ziva, badly. But he was going to let her set the pace, even if it killed him. As she slid her hands under his shirt to trace his abs before moving to undo his belt, he started to think it actually might. He set his hands on her slim hips, trying not to press too hard as she pushed the boundaries of his control. When he could feel the urge to press harder, he released Ziva so he didn't hurt her and settled for pulling off his shirt. Ziva had his pants halfway down his legs, stooping to slide the denim down, her hands setting off sparks of feeling all the way down. He'd wanted this — wanted her — for so long, he could hardly believe this was real, not another dream.

As she rose, he wrapped his palms around her upper arms. "Let me," he said. He started at the top and undid one button at a time, resisting the urge to rip off her shirt. She deserved loving and tender and he was going to give it to her. She didn't look at him, and when he felt his control start to slip, he forced himself to stop and use one hand to tip up her chin so he could look at her. Ziva's dark eyes shone and he stroked his thumb along her jawline. "Do I need to slow down?" he asked.

She shook her head and blinked, her eyelashes damp as she looked down again. Damon took a breath and released the fist of his free hand so he could continue undressing her. He finished with the buttons and slid her shirt from her shoulders, his breath catching at the edges of scars he could see on her shoulders.

"Do not say it," she said. "I will not break."

Damon didn't have an answer. He had seen the scars before, but not like this, when the light was low and the tension was high. Not when he had his hands on her skin and the knowledge that what lay behind those scars was the type of terror he'd lived with before. Instead, he walked behind her and put his lips on the first scar he saw, leaving light kisses as he traced the ones across her upper back. He unhooked her bra and did the same to the scars that criss-crossed the middle of her back. They continued down, and Damon slid his hands around Ziva to rest as he pulled her closer. Her skin was warm as he bent down to kiss her neck and mouth at her ear, to slide his hands down her legs and then back up. He could feel her trembling beneath him, her breath coming faster now. Damon focused on her slacks until they pooled at her feet and she stood there in just her underwear. He pulled away and moved to flip down the covers on his bed before turning to lift her and place her down. It would be a tight fit, but he could make it work. He smiled at the memory of his first time in high school, the girl who snuck him into her room one Saturday when her parents were out of town.

"Something is funny?" Ziva asked.

Damon shook his head. "Just a memory," he said. "Twin bed, making sure nobody else is home — it's taking me back to being a horny teenager." He smiled and leaned in to kiss her.

"I would not know," she said. "But I have heard stories from Tony. Or were those from just a year or two ago?" She smiled at him. "But we were not talking of Tony. We were not talking at all."

"No, we weren't," Damon said. He moved back to sit on his heels and consider their challenge. "If I could kneel here," he said, patting the sheets between her knees.

"Of course," Ziva said, moving her legs to accommodate him. As she did, he could see the tension in her muscles. His breath caught at the sight of the scars that marked her skin, but he knew Ziva. She wouldn't want them mentioned. So he moved as close to the end of the bed as he could and started at her ankles, working his way up. Gentle kisses, soft touches and warm breath across her skin soon left her trembling, soft noises escaping her.

"You do not need to be gentle with me, Damon," she said. "As I said, I will not break."

He looked up and grinned. "Oh, you can ride me hard and put me away wet next time." He traced designs on her skin with his fingertips. "Just..." His voice trailed off as he bent over her again, his tongue following the trails of his fingers.


	21. Chapter 21

_The most interesting part of posting this chapter-by-chapter here has been seeing reactions to each individual chapter as the story unfolds, compared with the reactions by those who read the entire Big Bang version in one sitting. Last chapter, which had more reviews than any since the first, was a particularly good reminder of those differences. It makes me wonder what you all will have to say as the final seven chapters go live over the next couple of weeks._

* * *

Damon glanced up, his eyes dark in the lamplight. "Just... For tonight, let me love you."

She consciously released her muscles and relaxed into the mattress. Ziva let her eyes close and softened her breath. Damon's touch was unbearable as she tried to stay still, her muscles trembling and tightening despite her best intent.

Afterward, Ziva's limbs felt like she had just gone 10 rounds in the gym. She moved so that Damon was not on top of her, forcing her legs to steady as she stood.

"Ziva?" Damon said, his eyes already half-closed.

"You are right, it is not big enough for us to sleep," she said, pulling the sheet over his naked body. "Thank you, Damon." She kissed him, once, and bent to gather her clothes. She took the towel he had likely used that morning after his shower and wrapped it around her, then headed upstairs to her room. Only when she was there and able to sit on her bed did she allow herself to feel the aches in her body from muscles long unused. She stopped into the bathroom to clean up, then found took the clean nightclothes she had laid out and slipped them on before turning out the light and sliding between the sheets.

Ziva pulled the covers over her legs curled up into a ball. Scents, memories, touches assaulted her, forcing her into a smaller space, so tiny nobody would notice her. Rivken, Cryer, Saleem, Damon. She hid from all of them, from what they could do to her, and what they had done to her.

The evening spent vibrating, no vacillating, between intensity and release left her trembling as she slipped into sleep, her body twitching. Sometime during the night, she moved, her face pressing into the crook of her arm, the smells of her evening filling her mind.

_At first, she fought. Now, she could not, and she turned away as they came in, their bodies eager for the release they found in her, their minds slavering at the power they held over her. She ignored them, faced the thick clay wall and tried to make herself small. But they came, still, forcing her onto her back, forcing her legs apart by striking them whenever she managed to force her trembling muscles into a protective pose._

_The day came when she chose to stop fighting, to hope that by allowing them to take what they wanted, they would put away the whip and stop the beatings. They used her instead, stripped her and left her naked so she was available for them whenever they wanted. She knew the moment was coming when they would beat the life out of her. Still, she tried to ignore them and focus on hope._

When she woke, she had barely enough energy to sit up. Her stomach rolled and she felt clammy from the damp sweat. Her clock showed it was still hours until morning. Ziva decided only a shower would do, and forced herself to stand. Once she had the water running, she stood under the steam until the heat left her lightheaded and the scent of her cedar soap filled the air, the smell so familiar from her childhood. As the water began to run cold, she turned it off, shivering a bit.

Ziva stripped her bed and then curled into it, falling into a deep sleep only broken by her alarm just as the dark began to lighten across her room.

She quickly dressed and pulled her long hair back, her fingers braiding it back without conscious thought. She saw Jethro sleeping at the foot of Damon's bed as she reached the bottom of the steps, and was careful not to disturb either dog or man. Before long, she was in her car, driving toward the Navy Yard.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Damon woke up when Jethro whined in his ear, and he woke just in time to catch a faceful of German shepherd tongue.

"Ugh." Damon swiped at his face and rolled up, reaching for a pair of boxers. His bed still smelled of last night, and he hoped Ziva still would be around. But when he walked through the house to let the dog outside, he could tell they were the only ones in it. He looked out the side window once Jethro was happily racing around the yard and saw only his own car. He wondered if the team had caught a case, and how he had missed her leaving. The coffeepot was working on the timer, and he poured himself a steaming cup, hoping the caffeine would wake him up.

As the coffee started to wake him up, Damon figured he could fold his laundry. But when he opened the laundry closet doors, he found his wash from yesterday morning was dry and folded on top of the appliances. The dryer was full of sheets, plus a pair of pajamas that had to be Ziva's. Damon figured he'd return the favor and folded them, leaving them on the dryer and taking his own to his room.

Damon waited until it was clear Jethro would be playing outside for a while before heading upstairs for a shower. Ziva's towel was dry, but her soap was still barely tacky on top, so she'd showered several hours ago. Maybe she had done the laundry last night — he was pretty sure he'd passed out once she went to bed. He'd check with the team later today, see if they needed a dinner delivery if this was another of their "saving the free world 22 hours out of the day" days at the office.

He stopped at the open door to Ziva's room, and the pile of sheets on the floor by the bed caught his eye. He thought back to the weekend, when they usually did laundry. Sarah said she'd rather do that than help cook, so she'd gathered up all their laundry and run it through. He remembered her walking downstairs with an armful of sheets because he'd taken them from her before she got to the bottom.

_"Thanks, Damon," she said. "That last step is tough enough to see these days when I'm not carrying anything." She tried to take them back, but Damon just headed for the washing machine._

_"I'll get mine," he said. "Any more upstairs?"_

_"No, this is all of mine and Ziva's," she replied._

If Sarah had washed Ziva's sheets Sunday, and Ziva had washed another pair Wednesday, why did she have a third dirty set on Thursday? Damon hesitated, then stepped inside the room. He picked up the sheets and sniffed. He could smell Ziva, but there was the pungent smell of dried sweat overlaying it. He dropped them to the floor and backed out. He went back downstairs, but as he got dressed, the obvious conclusion kept running through his mind. Another nightmare. Was that why Ziva hadn't wanted to stay with him? Damon pulled his henley over his head as the second option struck him. He forced it aside and focused on getting ready for work. He couldn't think about that now.

But by mid-afternoon, he couldn't stop thinking about it. When Damon hit a lull, he stepped outside and pulled out his phone, dialing the number before he could talk himself out of it.

"I need to talk to you — privately," he said. Once the details were arranged, Damon disconnected the call. This wasn't going to be a good conversation, he knew that now.


	22. Chapter 22

_AN: The chapters are getting shorter, but more intense. If you haven't pulled out the tissue box yet, you might want to have it handy for these last few._

* * *

Damon walked into the coffee shop 20 minutes before he was supposed to meet Tony and scouted out the space to see which tables were free and appropriate for the discussion they were about to have. Damon hoped it stayed a discussion, at least. Tony would have every right to break his nose for this, and Damon wouldn't fight him.

He picked a table in the corner farthest from the pick-up counter. When he'd called Tony, he hadn't realized Sarah was working this afternoon — she must have gotten called in — and he did not want her to get mixed up in this if he could help it.

Damon ordered and was sitting back at the table when Tony walked in. He caught the agent's eye before Tony went to the cashier. By the time Tony joined him at the table, Damon almost wished he was back in Afghanistan again. Almost.

"You know, when the man living with my sister-in-law and honorary sister says he needs to talk to me privately, I start picturing lots of scenarios, and most of them ended in tragedy on the screen." Tony wrapped his hands around the coffee cup on the table in front of him.

"It's not Sarah," Damon said, knowing how protective Tony was of her — especially after what her ex had done.

"Ziva, then." Tony looked him in the eye. "Would Gibbs kick your ass if you told him?"

"You're going to beat him to it," Damon said. He tried to relax his hands out of fists.

"Just tell me," Tony said. "I've been a cop for long enough that I can guarantee whatever it is, I can imagine worse."

"Can you?" Damon knew he sounded bitter, but he didn't care. "Sarah is staying at her parents' house for a couple of nights. I got home yesterday and Ziva had cooked. She'd set the table for two, candles and everything."

"For a date." Tony's voice was flat. His face gave nothing away.

"We've been on dates," Damon replied. He remembered what Gibbs had said the first time they'd met — courage was running toward the fight, not away. "This... This was a seduction." He made himself finish. "After dinner, she suggested we take things to my room." He wanted to look away, but Tony deserved better. "She didn't want me to stop. I should have. She-"

"Oh, fuck," Tony said. "She decided her mission was to make sure you thought she was fine, didn't she."

Damon nodded. "It didn't..." He tried to find the right words. "There's always been this spark, me and Ziva."

"Oh, believe me, I know," Tony said. "I've teased her enough times about it." He sighed. "It's not just you. She's been off ever since Mexico. We've all been worried about her, and I'm not sure she's been honest with any of us."

Damon thought back over what he'd seen. "She's been whipped and beaten in areas I don't even want to think about taking that kind of abuse," he said. "I know she's had at least one flashback, probably more. And that was before last week." He wanted to look away, but he knew that was the coward's way out. "I caught her a few times, walking the house after a nightmare. I gave her some names of people to talk to, ones we recommend at Wounded Warriors who are used to helping people with this kind of trauma."

"And by trauma, you're not just talking about torture," Tony said.

Damon shook his head. "Whatever you're thinking, it's probably right," he said. The memory of smooth, raised flesh beneath his fingertips made him wince. "I don't know how much you've seen of her scars, but there are a lot that you can't see most of the time." He knew his laugh was too bitter. "I've done some reading today. Mossad is known for using sex to accomplish its missions. And as little as she says about it, I know Ziva went to Somalia on a mission."

"They teach agents to compartmentalize." Tony's hand clenched into fists. "Back during her first year or two on the team, she talked about using sex to get information." The next noise out of his mouth sounded like a growl, and Damon braced for the inevitable punch. But Tony didn't move.

"Eli David can burn in hell," Tony said. "He and his 'soulless, ruthless killer,' mentality toward his children." Tony's fist smacked his other palm as he cursed. "We knew it," he said, finally. "Me, Tim, Abby, Jimmy — we all had a feeling she was hiding that, and none of us did anything."

"There has to be more than that," Damon said. He remembered that night in the kitchen, the light low around them. "I told her the first time I caught her awake after a flashback that I knew. I fought in the Middle East. I know what they do to women who are captured. That's why I offered her the names." He looked around, then lowered her voice. "Tony, I've worked with women who have been raped. Everybody's reaction is different, but there's something else here."

"What do you mean?"

Damon tried to fit together the pieces he'd seen. "She's less comfortable around Sarah than around me, and that's not what I would expect."

"Abby said Ziva had been avoiding her, even before-" Tony broke off.

"Before?" Damon asked.

As Tony recapped the discussion of the case with the petty officer who'd been caned, Damon whistled. "That's a hell of a trigger," he said.

"Ducky warned us," Tony said. "We should have warned you."

"You didn't know we were dating," Damon said. "I think Brad was the only one I mentioned it to — we hadn't said anything to Sarah. I don't know about Ziva, but I didn't want her feeling like a third wheel in the house."

"We still should have said something," Tony said. "It's not like we didn't know you two were headed that way." He shook his head. "That doesn't explain why she was off before that case, though. If she was worried about us figuring out, she would have avoided Ducky and Gibbs."

"I'll talk to her," Damon said. "She knows you'd have to tell Gibbs if you found out."

Tony sighed. "If it doesn't affect her in the field, Gibbs doesn't have to know. But she knows if he asked, I wouldn't be able to not tell him, and she doesn't need that kind of stress at this point." He pushed his chair back. "If you make this worse-"

"I won't even fight back," Damon said. "Hell, I'll beat myself up if it comes to that."

Tony pulled out his phone and punched a few buttons, then texted Damon. "Ducky's phone number," he said. "If you need to, call him."

Damon stored the number. "I will. Hopefully I won't have to."

"If you can get her to tell you, that's the biggest step," Tony said. "That's the hardest part is telling the first person about abuse, no matter what kind." He fell silent for a second. "It gets easier the second time, and the third. Trust me."

Damon nodded, not sure just what to say to that. After Tony walked away, Damon sat there for long minutes, staring at his mug.


	23. Chapter 23

_**AN:** I really did not intend to leave everybody hanging this long, but work's been insane this week. If you read about the Virginia state senator who was stabbed by his son, who then killed himself, that was the next county over, and state mental health is one of our key coverage topics. We scooped the Washington Post twice, discovered problems that prompted a state inspector general investigation into why the son didn't get help for a mental health crisis the day before the stabbing/shooting and pulled together a deep dive for Sunday's paper on the flaws and gaps in the state mental health safety net. So, yeah. It's been a busy few days. (Don't ask where NaNo stands. It's not pretty.) OTOH, there are worse places in this story for me to leave you hanging than the end of last chapter. Like the end of this one. _

* * *

By the time Tony had driven around enough to calm down and found a parking space near their apartment, dusk was falling. He could see a light on in the future nursery, so he went there first when he walked in and found Tim just putting the lid on a paint can.

"Out," Tim said. "Even with this low-VOC paint, you're still not supposed to breathe it in." He turned on a fan in the open window and left, closing the room's door behind him. "It can air out overnight."

"I don't know whether to call you McSneaky or McMom," Tony said as he headed for their bedroom to change into jeans and a T-shirt.

"You're the one with the mysterious errand," Tim said as he stripped out of his paint-spattered clothes. "Want to share? You saw my secret project."

Tony scrubbed a hand across his face. "Damon wanted to meet me."

"Sarah?" Tim froze. He dropped onto the bed.

"Ziva." Tony tried to loosen the boulders that clogged his shoulders. "It's bad. Really bad."

"She told Damon about the case and he wants to kick my ass for traumatizing her?" Tim asked. He scooted back so he was half-lying, back against the headboard

"She didn't tell him." Tony paced around the room. "She should have told him."

"Says the king of refusing to share," Tim retorted.

"I didn't get you to fuck me so nobody would realize something was wrong," Tony shot back, then clamped his hand over his month.

"What?" Tim sat straight up on the bed. "You? He? Ziva? What?"

Tony dropped his hand and let out a breath. "Not me. Not us. Never us." He sat on the bed next to his husband. "Ziva's been having nightmares, flashbacks. They started before Paloma was captured, but Damon said they've continued. And they're getting worse. Damon tried to get her to get some help, but she shut him down." He shook his head. "No, worse than that. She decided to make it her mission to make sure Damon thought she was fine."

As what little color he had drained from Tim's skin, Tony found himself nodding. "Yeah. Mata Hari seduced him last night. He didn't put the pieces together until this morning, and no, I don't know how. I wasn't sure I wanted to ask."

"The case?"

"Probably." Tony rubbed his wrists, one at a time. "It was bad before that, though. You know it, I know it, Damon knows it."

"Did you break his nose?"

"It takes all the fun out of it when he offers it up for me," Tony said, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. "I have to talk to her."

"I can do it," Tim replied, his hand reaching over to pull Tony's apart, keeping him from rubbing.

Tony shook his head. "She needs to hear it from me." He looked out the window at the lights from the buildings that lined the streets. "I just don't know if she'll listen."

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

The next afternoon, McGee spoke to Ducky and Jimmy at lunch and the three came up with a plan to get Gibbs out of the bullpen for a while.

Once Gibbs was headed downstairs in response to Ducky's phone call, McGee turned to Tony. "So what do we do now, Very Special Agent DiNozzo?" He smirked so it looked normal.

"You and Cooper work with Abby to bulletproof the computer forensics on the Adams case," Tony said. "Coleman's the JAG lawyer, and you know how much she likes skewering Gibbs in court if there's a gap. Ziva and I will go talk to the widow once more, just to tie up loose ends."

McGee just nodded and motioned for Josh Cooper to follow him. He had to hope this worked, before things spun out of control.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Once they were off the Navy Yard, Tony headed for the Mall. If they crossed over past the Washington Monument, they would be far enough away from most of the tourists.

"I thought we were going to talk to the widow," Ziva said as he parked the car.

"I lied," Tony said. "Come on." He headed for the grass and counted on Ziva's own curiosity to do the rest.

He only had to wait a few minutes before she joined him on the grassy space overlooking the Reflecting Pool, currently a construction zone. The noise meant nobody could overhear them, and the open space meant nobody could sneak up on them.

"Why did you lie?" Ziva crossed her arms, weight evenly balanced on her feet.

"I didn't think you'd want anybody to hear this, and I knew you wouldn't go if I told you why," Tony retorted. "Ziva, this isn't the way."

She raised an eyebrow and looked at him, her face unreadable.

"You don't want to talk about it. You don't want anybody to know about it." Tony fought back the remnants of fear. "You think once people know, once we know, we'll look at you differently. We'll think you're weak, or we'll think you should have done something differently, shouldn't have let it happen."

"You are not making sense," she said. But she didn't look at him.

"Ziva, we're worried about you. Pretending it didn't happen won't make it go away. I tried for years, decades, to make the memories go away." He waited. Minutes ticked by. Finally, she looked at him. "In my case, it was abuse, and I couldn't talk about it until almost a year ago. In your case, it was torture and rape, wasn't it?"

Ziva's gaze sharpened into a glare. "You know nothing."

"I know that you can't deal with this using your father's methods," he said. "Sex with Damon won't make it go away, and you're going to drive him away if you keep it up."

"He told you?" Ziva released her arms and curled her hands into fists. "Ben zonah."

"He's worried about you, Ziva. We all are."

"You are worried about nothing." She stalked off. Tony waited a beat to give her time to cool off. But that just meant he was on the sidewalk when she popped up and pulled away in the Charger.

"Son of a bitch, she hot wired it." Tony ran a hand through his hair and wondered how he was going to explain this to Gibbs without Ziva gutting him with a paperclip.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Ziva missed this focus that anger gave her. It was not rage, not the type that caused sailors and Marines too often to do something ill-advised that led to NCIS investigating. Rage was hot. Anger was different. Anger was cold.

She saw every detail on the drive home with clarity. When she pulled into the driveway, even the torrent of barking from inside the house didn't soften the edge she felt. She did not let Jethro know she was upset. But the moment the second car pulled into the driveway, Ziva was standing where Damon could not miss seeing her.

Damon grinned as he walked in. "Hey-"

"You had no right." Ziva crossed her arms. "You talked to Tony about things that are not his business."

Damon held up his hands and stopped a few feet away. "Ziva, I was worried about you," he said.

"You do not need to worry about me. I am fine." She glared at him.

"You're not fine," Damon said. "You're having nightmares and flashbacks, and they've gotten worse this week."

"You told Tony?" Ziva felt the edges of rage blur her anger. "What, you tell him about sex with me and he tells you how McGee whips him?" She wanted to step back, but held her ground. Weakness was a liability.

"Whoa!" Damon said. "First, I don't know what anybody else is doing in bed, and I don't want to. Second, no, I didn't tell him anything."

"You expect me to believe you?" Ziva compressed her lips and stood straight and tall.

"Don't pull that crap with me, Ziva. You're the one who lied to me." Damon's words were like a blow to her face and she stepped back before she could stop herself.


	24. Chapter 24

_AN: Yes, this one is short. And yes, I'm evil. Also, there's something in this chapter that's headcanon for me about Somalia for Ziva, so it's an unspoken subtext in one other (non-Breathe) story I've written. If you know which one, let me know in comments, please! _

* * *

Damon saw Ziva step back and knew he had to decide — push or give her space. Or could he just stand his ground? He saw her open her mouth and spoke first.

"You don't talk about Somalia," he said. He was careful to keep his tone even and his body relaxed. "You don't talk about the scars. You don't talk about what they did to you."

"You know nothing about what they did to me." Ziva stepped forward. "You want to know? You want me to tell you they beat me? You want to hear how they whipped me until my body bled? You want to hear how they pinned me down and raped me? How they came, one after the other, until I was torn and bleeding? Is that what you want? You want to hear all of it?"

Her tone was harsh, but she was in complete control. Damon had to fight back his urge to kill the people who did this to her.

"It's not whether I want to hear it that matters." He picked his words carefully. "It's what you need to say to start to heal that matters."

"It is done. Like my scars, it is healed." She held her gaze steady on him, but he could see the tension all the way down her neck.

"Your body is healed," Damon said. "But you told me once that trauma intensifies memory, back when I needed help." He paused, hoping it would sink in a bit. "Something's kicked your memory into high gear." He hesitated. "I can move out if it's having me in the house."

"It is not you that-" Ziva broke off.

Damon waited, but Ziva didn't finish what she had started to say. He decided to tread lightly. "If it's not me living here that's the problem..." He let his sentence trail off, and Ziva paled a bit. "You and Sarah are friends, though."

Ziva didn't stir.

"You invited Sarah to live with you."

"I did not know-" She snapped her mouth shut.

Damon didn't know what he had stumbled into, but this had to be the meat of the issue. "What didn't you know?" he asked. "You knew Sarah was pregnant before-" He stopped. "Ziva?"

She stared at him, her face pale and the pieces came together in his mind. "Were you-?"

Ziva cut him off. "You do not know."

He opened his mouth, but she stepped forward into his face. "You do not know," she repeated. "But you insist, so now you must listen. They beat me and raped me every day. At first they fed me and gave me water so they could torture me for information. Before many weeks had passed, I knew something was not right. When I realized, I hoped they would kill me. But they did not. As I grew thinner, I could feel what they had done, then I could see it. They saw it too, and they beat me for it. They beat me until my body could not take it. They beat me until I bled, my body rejecting what they had put there. It did not stop then. It did not stop and I passed out. I thought I was dead." She stepped back. "After the team came for me, they sent me to a hospital once I was back. The doctors there fixed everything they could. But they could not fix that. The damage was too great." She turned away and walked toward the living room. Damon followed, careful to give her some space.

"Why are you still here?" She stopped and looked back at him.

"Why would I leave?" Damon asked. "You went through hell over there, but that isn't your fault."

"It was my mission," Ziva said. "It was my choice."

"That doesn't make it your fault," he said, moving to sit in the armchair. "Whatever they did to you is their fault, not yours. You survived. If you want to put something on yourself, take that. You made it."

She moved to look out the window. "Did I?"


	25. Chapter 25

_**AN:** And we're past the 50K mark on this story. Just two chapters after this. Now if I can just get past the 50K mark on my NaNo draft..._

* * *

Ziva gazed through the glass at the street, the houses typical of any American suburb. Children played in yards, or drew on the sidewalk with chalk. One girl across the street, two houses down, spun around, her arms held over her head.

"When I was a young girl I promised myself that when my daughter danced onstage I would be there to watch her perform, unlike my father, who was not there for me." Ziva did not look back at Damon. "When I grew older and chose to follow Eli into Mossad, I promised myself I would not have children. I would not do to them what he had done to me. When I fought for Mossad, I told myself it did not matter that I would not live long enough to have children, that I would not be a mother.

"When the new director recruited me to NCIS, I followed her example. She made the choices to get where she got when she got there, and I told myself those were the same choices that I had to make. The longer I stayed with NCIS, the more I realized I had a choice. I did not have to follow through on those decisions I had made when I was in Israel. When I was with Mossad. When I was following in Eli's footsteps.

"I saw that being an agent did not mean you could not have a life outside the office. I saw that Gibbs had a wife and daughter who he cared for very much even though he served, and so I began to think someday maybe I would have a family and husband. Now I know I cannot. I know I will not."

She could not look back at Damon. She did not want to see pity or revulsion. She could not bear sympathy. Not now.

Ziva did not hear him move, but his voice came from the wrong side of the room when Damon finally spoke.

"You're talking about two different things," Damon said. "It's tough to remember between McBabies and bat-gremlins, but not everybody wants children. Just look at Sarah."

"Sarah is young," Ziva said. "When I was her age, I did not know I would feel this way now."

"Sarah has parents who let her grow up knowing her own mind," Damon said. "The kind that teach their children how to know who they are and what they want. Your father, from everything you and the team have said, did the opposite. He taught you to please him, regardless of what you wanted."

"Eli did not order me into the desert." She shut down memories of that day, of yelling at Malachi as she hefted her knapsack and strode off into the crowds.

"He didn't have to," Damon said. "He knew you would go, didn't he."

"You have not met Eli."

"I've heard stories." Damon's voice was closer, but not close enough to be a threat. "And I've seen you in action. I know you, Ziva. I know you can be whoever you want, as long as you trust yourself."

"It does not matter," she said. "I am damaged. Nobody would want me."

"Bullshit." Damon's voice never changed tone or got louder. "You think that's why people get together? How do you explain Tony and McGee?"

"Abby did not want to settle down until she started to see herself as a potential mother," Ziva replied.

Damon was silent, and Ziva finally turned around. She opened her mouth to make her point, but he spoke first.

"Abby is not typical of anything, and you all know it," he said from where he stood, at least five feet away. "None of you are, really." He smiled. "That seems to be what sucks the rest of us into your orbit."

"Still, this was something I did to myself."

Something — anger, she thought — passed across Damon's face. But when he spoke, he voice was quiet, something simmering under the surface. "No, it isn't," he said. "It's all their fault."

"It was my choice to go on the mission," she said. "Mine to let myself be taken alive, something I vowed never to do for this reason."

Damon balled up a fist and wrapped his other hand around it. "So one decision leads to something terrible and that's it?" He shook his head. "Try again, Ziva."

"You cannot know." She stood straight and crossed her arms over her chest. "It is my fault I am damaged, and I must live with that."

The knuckles on Damon's top hand turned white, tension clear. "You remember how we met?"

"It would be difficult to forget." Ziva forced herself to shrug. "What does that matter?"

"Years of steroids," Damon said. "Years of messing with the hormone and chemical levels in my body." He laughed, no mirth in it. "You know what that does? The doctors told me back then that I'd probably permanently screwed myself out of shooting anything but blanks." He let his hands drop to his side, arms loose, and stepped forward. "That was even more my choice than your mission was. You have Eli to blame. I can only blame my own fucked-up sense of what made a good Marine." He stopped three feet from her, and her muscles couldn't decide whether to tense for flight or not. "That doesn't mean I let it run my life. It doesn't mean I used that as an excuse not to get the help I needed after we met. And it doesn't mean I let one thing determine who I am."

He lifted his arms, palms open toward her. "You need to talk to somebody, Ziva. Ducky at least. Better yet, a professional who works with the living and specializes in this type of trauma."

"And if I do not?" She would not allow herself to listen to what he had said, to think about what it might mean.

"You can't keep going like this, Ziva. You need to sleep without nightmares, at least some nights. You need to be 100 percent when you go into the field, and right now, you're not. You need to talk to somebody." Damon's gaze held her there, and she did not like the feeling.

Ziva looked away, then stepped to the side. "That is my decision, not yours." She stepped again, then a third time, before she had a clear path to the side door and to escape. She ran, Damon's voice calling after her. But she never heard his steps try to chase her down as she slammed the door behind her and pulled her keys from her pocket. She backed out, barely remembering to check for children in the street. The car's tires squealed on the asphalt as she accelerated.


	26. Chapter 26

_**AN:** Happy Thanksgiving for the Americans reading this! I figured I should wrap this up so people who have been waiting for it to finish can read it over the long weekend. Last chapter will post by lunchtime tomorrow. Also, I broke 50K on my NaNo draft today. Go me! It's not where I wanted to be for the month, but considering how much heck broke loose at work, I'm still pretty proud of finishing. I'll be posting some excerpts on my author FB page in the next day or two (facebook dot com slash JennieCoughlinExeter) if you want to see what I write when I'm not torturing our favorite naval investigators. ;) _

* * *

Gibbs picked up his cell phone on the third ring.

"Yeah, Gibbs." He tucked the phone between his ear and his shoulder and continued planing the wood on the crib, shaping the curves of the headboard. At the silence on the other end, he waited a beat. "Anybody there?" When nothing came, he disconnected, snapping the phone closed.

He looked at the time on the phone — almost midnight — and the Caller ID. Ziva. "Hell." Gibbs shoved the phone in the pocket of his jeans, then pulled it out again. He had a rare moment of hesitation before he punched in a number.

"Boss?" Tony's voice was thick with sleep.

"You heard from Ziva tonight?"

All of a sudden Tony sounded wide awake. "Not since she hotwired the Charger on me this afternoon."

"Hotwired?" Gibbs didn't like not knowing things. "You forget to tell me something, DiNozzo?"

Tony sighed. "I didn't forget."

"DiNozzo." Gibbs' hands tightened over the wood frame in front of him. "You hiding things from me?"

"I was going to tell you tomorrow." At his words, Gibbs could hear noise in the background that had to be McGee.

"It's zero-oh-two, DiNozzo," Gibbs said. "It's tomorrow."

"If she called you, it's probably because she's trying to get to where she can talk to you, Boss," Tony said. "McLocator's pulling up her phone's GPS, and he's calling Damon. But I'm not going to tell you unless it looks like Ziva's in trouble. Trust me. That will only make this uglier."

"A hint, DiNozzo?"

Nothing for a minute, and Gibbs only held off on yelling because he could hear them talking in the background. Finally, Tony spoke: "Her phone's outside your house, and Damon said she stormed out after she yelled at him and he pissed her off."

"You mean he pissed her off and she yelled at him."

"Nope. She started by yelling when he got home. Then he pissed her off more by telling her she needed to talk to somebody. If she's there trying to come inside and talk to you, I'm not screwing the team up by telling you first."

Gibbs stared at his phone after Tony hung up. No wonder it pissed Vance off when he did the same thing to the director.

Still, Tony had given him valuable intel. He walked upstairs, cautious. The low light in the kitchen illuminated the room enough to see that Ziva wasn't lying in wait. He moved silently across the living room, grabbing his old night vision binoculars from the top of a stack of books. He scanned until he found the car, Ziva in the drivers' seat. She was the only one there. Gibbs nodded, once, then stepped back and set the binoculars down. He padded across the room to the kitchen and managed to find the tea Jack kept in the cabinet for when Sean and Eileen were over. He picked up the kettle and shook it to make sure there was enough water before setting it back on the burner and turning the gas on. While it boiled, Gibbs managed to find an extra travel mug in the cupboard. He unwrapped the teabag and dropped it in, then poured the water over it once it had boiled. Gibbs got his gun from the safe and changed from sneakers to boots before pulling a long-sleeved T-shirt on. It wasn't the fall weather that dipped into the 30s at night, but it was cool enough to want more than a T-shirt, especially if he would be out there a while.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Ziva drove to Rock Creek Park after leaving the house. She parked near a restroom and ducked inside to change into the running clothes she kept in her gear. After four miles, her muscles were trembling and she realized how little she had eaten that day. She used her phone to find the closest store and went inside to buy a piece of fruit, an energy bar, a six-pack of water and a sports drink. The drink first, the electrolytes and sugars staving off the trembling that must be obvious even to a bystander at that point. Then the water — two bottles — and the peach. She paused, feeling her body steady. She uncapped a third bottle of water and alternated bites of the energy bar with sips of water. Only then did she realize her clothes were stiff with sweat and it was after nine at night. She did not want to go home. Not yet. She would need more gas if she intended to continue driving around. What else could she do? She would not talk to Tony, not after today. She could not go to McGee because Tony would be there. Abby and Jimmy were not options. They would not understand, and Ziva could not handle Abby's emotions tonight. Sarah and the McGees were out for the same reasons. She thought about going to talk to Ducky, but she knew at this hour, the elderly medical examiner would either be in bed or close to it by the time she navigated her way over to his brownstone.

That left only Gibbs, but that also meant Jack. Another person she was not sure she could deal with. Still, Jack, like Ducky, was in bed earlier than Gibbs. Jack slept upstairs, and she could easily slip into the house and down to the basement to talk to Gibbs. She did not know what she could say, though, or what she should say.

Ziva drove across town to the Mall, parking near the Jefferson Memorial. She walked up the steps, bathed in the lights that made the memorial a focal point along the Tidal Basin. She looked west, to where the Lincoln Memorial anchored one end of the Reflecting Pool, another pool of light in the night. She could not truly see the Vietnam and Korean memorials, but she knew they were there, faint glows marking the spaces where crowds gathered at the smaller memorials, visiting to honor those lost in battles fought by different rules than the ones today. Neither one had been a concern of Eli's, nothing compared to the defense of his homeland, and the great war that had led to its creation. As a child, Ziva had only cared for those battles that affected her homeland. Then she moved to the United States and began to learn about the American perspective. She looked east to the World War II memorial, the one honoring a battle that was fought before the current Israeli state existed, the war that led to the creation of the Israel she once called home. She had fought its battles for many years, until it took too much from her. Until Eli demanded too much from her. He was an outsize figure in a small country. Now she was only one in a country larger than any in the industrialized world. Just a single person, not the future of the agency that maintained the safety of a nation-state under constant attack.

She began to realize Damon was right. She could not let Eli and his decisions, or her decisions that he had driven, continue to rule her life. He had taken too much from her over the years, and she would not allow her to take this from her. Decision made, she turned and headed to her car, her muscles protesting. She would pay in the morning for not properly stretching them today after her run. But that would be tomorrow.

Ziva drove south over the Potomac to Gibbs' Alexandria neighborhood. She parked on the street, the houses dark. She did not see a light on the main floor of his house, but knew that meant nothing. If he was in the basement, she would not be able to see from the front of the house.

Ziva pulled out her phone and dialed his cell number. But when he answered, she couldn't find the words. Before she could figure out what to say, he had disconnected. She wrapped her fingers around the phone and tried to bring her breathing under control. She had told Damon. She could tell Gibbs. She did not even have to tell him all of it. She thought perhaps he would prefer not to know all of it, especially the events of the past few days.

Still, she did not move. Only when a movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention did she stir. She saw Gibbs walking toward the car, and hit the automatic locks so he could come inside.

"Drink some tea, Ziver," he said as he settled in the passenger seat. He held out the travel mug, and she took it, the heat seeping into fingers she didn't realize were cold.


	27. Chapter 27

_**AN:** Thanks for all the comments throughout this story, and to everybody who's stuck with it so far. I know some of the subject matter has been difficult — that was always the nature of this story — and I appreciate those who were willing to join me (and Ziva) in tackling it._

* * *

Gibbs sat in the passenger seat and watched as Ziva wrapped her fingers around the mug. She breathed in the steam from the small slit in the lid. He waited. She wouldn't talk until she was ready. She never had.

The minutes ticked by, the pair of them sitting in silence. Finally, Ziva spoke.

"You are not going to ask?"

Gibbs turned toward her and lifted one eyebrow.

"Of course you are not. You are, as Tony says, a functional mute." A smile was gone from her face almost as soon as it appeared. "You will not talk. And I-" She paused, breathed in and exhaled. "I do not know if I can."

Gibbs sat and waited.

"When I returned last year, I wanted to be back to normal," she said. "Too much, I think. I did not see how I could put Somalia behind me until I was back on the team as an agent."

"Psych eval?" Gibbs prompted.

"You and Tony both know it is possible to get through those," she said. "You should not be surprised that I, too, was able to pass."

He nodded, once.

Ziva set the mug in the cupholder and reached for the Star of David that hung around her neck. "I learned much in Mossad. Too much, maybe. I pushed some things aside, convinced myself it was the best way to deal with them." She paused. "I was wrong." She let her fingers fall away from the small pendant. "I do not say that often," she said. "But I need to, this time."

Gibbs reached over and covered her hand with his. She turned hers over and squeezed his hand, then removed her own.

"I-" She broke off and started over. "There are things that happened in Somalia, ones I have not talked about." She bit her lower lip and looked at him. "I do not want to talk about them with you, and I do not think you want to hear them." Before he could reply, she continued, "But I do need to talk to somebody about them." She looked down, and he couldn't see her eyes anymore. "I do not-" She started over. "Until I do this, I should not be in the field. I cannot do my job, not the way you need me to."

Gibbs reached over and tipped her chin up until she looked at him, her eyes damp.

"You'll get your time," he said. "I'll square it with Vance. This won't affect your job, once you're ready."

"Thank you."

He let his hand drop. "Ziva, you have a chance. Make sure you take it. Don't come back until you're ready. Don't let any of us push you into doing that."

"I will not."

He smiled. "You can do this, Ziver — and we'll be here if you need us."

"I will remember that," she said. "I- Thank you." She started to hand him back the mug.

"Keep it," he said. "If you want a refill, Jack's usually got the kettle on. Any time, day or night."

Ziva nodded, and set the cup back in its place. Gibbs opened the car door and got out. He stood on the sidewalk and watched as she drove off. He would talk to Leon tomorrow, make sure her badge would still be there when she was ready.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

Ziva felt lighter as she left Gibbs' house. But the closer she got to the house in Silver Spring, the heavier the weight in her heart became. She had talked to Gibbs, but she still needed to make things right with Damon, and she did not know if that was possible. It should not be, after what she did.

When she pulled up to the house, all the lights on the second floor were out. But the one in Damon's bedroom still burned. Ziva knew she could not escape this conversation.

She walked inside. Damon was sitting on his bed, legs crossed, with Jethro's head on his lap.

"Tony and McGee will not be happy he is on the bed," she said.

"Special circumstances," Damon said, his fingers combing through the dog's fur. "I heard you went to see Gibbs."

She wanted to argue, but as she opened her mouth, she stopped. No. That was not the way. And she did not know who had told him. If Tony knew, Tim would know, and Tim could have tracked her. Any of the three men could have called Gibbs, or Gibbs could have called them. It did not matter. Fixing what she had broken was all that mattered.

"I did." She stood in the doorway to his room. "I did not tell him everything, but he knows the important things." She squared her shoulders. "I should not have yelled at you earlier. You were right, and I was not."

Damon got up, leaving Jethro staring after him with a puzzled expression on his face. At least Ziva was sure Abby would say it was puzzled. She forced her mind back on its unpleasant track. Damon would yell now, and she would take it because she deserved it.

"Did you figure anything out while you were gone?" he asked.

Ziva nodded.

"That is all that matters, then." He stopped in front of her and smiled.

Ziva looked at him, but could not understand.

**~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~**

"Why do you not hate me?" Ziva stood there, eyes dry. Her body was rigid with tension. "What I did to you-"

Damon cut her off. "I broke Tony's nose. I dislocated McGee's shoulder. I could have thrown you into the wall. You never hated me for that." One side of his mouth quirked up. "Even Tony's forgiven me for the nose."

"But you did not know what you were doing," Ziva said. "I planned this. I seduced you, knowing what you wanted and knowing I did not mean it that way, even if I wanted to."

"You did what you thought you needed to do to protect yourself," Damon said. "Was I mad? Yeah. I was. But I couldn't hate you." He hesitated. "I love you too much to ever hate you."

Ziva stared at him, and he was afraid he had said too much. Still, he wouldn't take it back.

"I do not deserve your love," she said, her voice barely audible. She looked down, her dark lashes veiling her eyes.

"You don't 'deserve' love," Damon said. "You think Tim loves Tony because Tony deserves it? No, he loves him because he's Tony." He reached down and tipped her chin up. "You never have to deserve my love. Not me, not the rest of the team, not Gibbs. And if anybody makes you think you need to do something or be somebody to be loved, then it isn't love. It's control."

Ziva nodded, a single tear spilling out from one eye. "Ani ohevet otcha," she said. "The last time I said those words, they were to a man who did not return them." She put a hand to Damon's chest, right above his heart. He put his hand over hers.

"And now?" he asked.

"Now I say them in English, language of my country," she said. "I, too, love you." She swallowed audibly. "I... I did not do what I should have before. I made a mistake."

Damon put a finger to her lips. "We both made mistakes," he said. "We're going to get this right, and that means you set the pace." He put his hands on her shoulders. "It also means you need to get help."

Ziva nodded. "Gibbs is going to work with the director to allow me to get the help I need, and I am taking a leave of absence, until my doctor says I am ready to return."

Damon felt his shoulders relax. "Good," he said. Then she wrapped her arms around his ribs and hugged him, and Damon let her, his arms wrapping around her back. He bent down to whisper in her ear. "I know you'll find your way through this, and I'll be here for you every step of the way."

* * *

_Thank you for sticking with this until the end. This was a challenging story to write on several levels, but I've wanted to tell the story of Ziva's Somalia aftermath for quite a while. I only hope I was able to do her story justice. And yes, there will be more Breathe stories at some point. I'm also toying with an NCIS/NCIS:LA/Hawaii 5-0 crossover. But first I need to finish an Exeter draft for the book coming out next year. _


End file.
